Faith
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: War kills love & hate. It blurs the line between good and evil, & right and wrong. War makes heroes into murderers, & murderers into heroes. At the end of all things, what does Hermione have left? 2 men, 1 choice & faith. Marriage law. 99% DH compliant.
1. Till Death Do Us Part

**FAITH**

_(Author's Note: This is not from the Hp & Naked Lunch universe, although there are similarities. For those of you who are Constant Readers of my HP fanfics, I have made some artistic representations of Snape, both as a grown man and as a teenage Death Eater. The Link to my deviantART account is on my profile page.)_

**Chapter One: Till Death Do Us Part?**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1997**

**I: Snape**

In his office, Headmaster Snape sat behind warded and locked doors.

He was a man torn from the breast of everything promising, weighed down by the burden of the Wizarding World that rested on his shoulders

An enemy in the land of his friends and a friend in the land of his enemies.

It was the stillest time of the night, and he sat with a fag dangling from his lips and his hand knotted in his thick, coarse, greasy black hair.

A letter had come, via owl post that day.

From the Snape-Prince family owl, a huge, ancient, venerable old duffer by the name of Gawaine.

It was a communication he had been waiting for.

_Master Snape, _

_ I apologize that have been unable to reach you all summer; to do so may have compromised your ability to survive, as well as mine._

_ I attempted to send a brief message, through your Mum, that I did not believe you were a murdering Death Eater bastard, and that I was waiting your instructions._

_ I have sent for Gawaine, in hopes that this letter will reach you._

_ He knows where I am, should you want to reply; I know he will not be followed._

_ To prove that I never doubted you for a second, I have taken the Acolyte's Unbreakable Vow of Service under the influence of veritaserum, and in the presence of your fellow double agent, who I will refer to only by his code name, the "Prince of Darkness"._

_ At great risk to my own personal safety, and his._

_ Which may be a moot point, because I fear that my days are short._

_ We are very close to the end of all things. _

_ I am so surrounded by death, by the certainty of fighting, killing and dying that it is life that seems remote and frightening._

_ Especially a life without you._

_ It is very probable that the next time one of us sees the other, we will meet in Hell, or one will be standing over the other's body._

_ We may appear to be on opposite sides of this war, but even if you are not, as I believe, a double agent serving Albus Dumbledore, and you really are a murdering Death Eater bastard, you and I both know that means nothing._

_ Not to those who follow the Five Disciplines, who follow the old ways, walking in the paths set by the likes of Gandalf and Merlyn. _

_ Even their names, Magick of the Arts, Magick of the Earth, Magick of War, Magick of the Spheres and Magick of Sex, they speak to something arcane, something mystical, something outside and beyond the simple learning of spells, hexes and charms._

_ Something outside and beyond this stupid, petty war._

_ I understand now that you did what you did to serve both to your masters._

_ I am aware that very few witches and wizards who are not at least Half-Bloods take any interest in Cabals, High Ceremonial Magick and all the esoterica that goes with the Five Disciplines, but you saw within me an interest and an aptitude that without the invitation of a Master, let alone a Pendragon, one of five in the whole Wizarding World, a Master in the Third Degree of all Five Disciplines, I would never have hoped to pursue._

_ I have learned that a Master chooses his Acolyte as well as an Acolyte chooses her Master, and that the bond between Master and Acolyte can never be strained._

_ Never be severed._

_ Never be broken._

_ An Acolyte is bound to his or her Master, forever._

_ Beyond life and death, beyond space and time, for all eternity._

_ Before, I could only imagine the pain and the confusing that you must have felt, having two Master Magi, Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle._

_ The pain of an unyielding bond stretched, an unbreakable bond shattered._

_ Now I know it all too well._

_ A Man cannot serve two Masters, and neither can a Wizard._

_ Except you, Master Snape._

_ You have found a way to serve both your Masters, but at the expense of yourself._

_ Perhaps at the expense of your soul._

_ Whether you and Tom Riddle cooked up Dumbledore's death, or Albus, who must have been far more of a schemer than his students knew, plotted his demise, together, this doesn't matter to me._

_ You are my Master; I am your Acolyte; these are bonds which transcend war and politics._

_ I am Bound to you._

_ I know you have suffered, I know you are suffering._

_ I know I am suffering, too._

_ There is a great dead spot in my heart, a deep bloody wound in my soul, I feel the dull ache with every beat and the sharp pain with every step._

_ In every breath I take; my heart and my soul yearn to be reunited with my Master; there are times when your face is the only face I see._

_ Even if it means my death I want to return to Hogwarts, not just to fight the last fight, to see the war end, but to be reunited with my Master._

_ There is no life for me, in this world or the next, without you._

_ If you die, I will live only because I know that you would want me to continue on, to grow in knowledge, grace and power._

_ I will never be ashamed to say that Severus Snape is my Master._

_ If you live, and it is Tom Riddle you have served above all, I will fight for your life to the last drop of my blood; I will take a position at Azkaban so that I can be near to you, I will fight for the right to continue as your Acolyte._

_ If you live and Albus Dumbledore is your Master, I will be glad to share in your triumph._

_ Either way, I will not desert you._

_ I cannot abandon you._

_ If you are sick, I will nurse you._

_ If you are broke and homeless I will work, I will beg, I will steal to provide for you._

_ If you are starving I will go hungry so that you can eat._

_ When you are old and grey, I will protect you and care for you._

_ You will not die alone, my Master, I will always be at your side._

_ I have long known that this is my fate, and it is a kind fate, a just fate._

_ I knew who you were when I accepted you as my Master; the only thing I fear now is that you would turn your back on me._

_ In my darkest times I search for the presence of our Bond, and when I find it strong as ever; I find joy and hope._

_ I want you to find the same._

_ I look forward to the day when we are reunited._

_ Whether here, in this world, in Heaven or in Hell, I remain, _

_Your faithful Acolyte_

_Hermione Jean Granger._

Alone, and very close to the end of all things, Severus Snape had a moment of peace.

He cried.

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Night of the Final Battle, May, 1998**

**II: Hermione**

Hermione didn't know what the other combatants were doing that night; but with the battle ended she had only one goal in mind.

To go to the Shrieking Shack, and retrieve the body of her Master.

Even though it appeared to all that he had become traitor and a murderer, the news of his death had been like the slow killing blow of a rusty, dull-edged sword through her heart.

Harry explained the truth to her, thinking it would make her feel better.

But Hermione had known the truth, all along.

In her pocket, she still had the brief reply Gawaine had brought her, all those months ago.

_Granger, _

_ Horcruxes are a red herring. Riddle's true nature & true plan too horrible for you, even for his followers to contemplate. Nonetheless, continue. All part of the plan. Have spoken to Prince of Darkness. Your Vow is accepted. Further communication dangerous & unnecessary. I know you have not betrayed me & never will._

_Faithfully, your Master, _

_Snape_

They had been her hope for the future, those few, cryptic words.

Now, the scrap of parchment was all she had.

Hermione was glad that Snape had chosen the right Master, but she would rather have had him evil and alive than good and dead.

Shit wipes off, repentance is always possible, forgiveness always an option.

But Death is immutable, and Snape, good or evil, was dead.

In the oldest of times, before the wars of the ring, a dire mourning was required of an Acolyte who had lost a Master before completing their studies.

The ritual of the Oath of Mourning.

First, the acolyte was to take the ceremonial dagger, given to her by her master, and cut herself on her forehead between her eyes, over her heart, and over her belly, in the form of the Master's choosing.

Snape's was a squiggly line, representing the Slytherin serpent.

Making sure to cut deep enough that the marks would leave indelible scars.

Then she was to take a vow not to bathe, shave, or trim her hair or even her fingernails for seven years.

For that seven years she was to wander the world, in the same magically protecting but simplistic robe worn by a mendicant druid, not speaking to anyone unless she was first spoken to.

The Acolyte was allowed only to take a bowl, a canteen of some sorts, her wand, a wooden staff, and a pair of mendicant druid's boots.

She was to eat only bread, water, and legumes, and to subsist on the charity of other wizards and witches.

At the end of that time, the Acolyte could return to a more regular life, but she was bound to forsake all other goals to continue her studies, from what her Master had left behind, and then, having achieved mastery in whatever level the Master had recommended, could resume a normal life.

The whole process, when all was said and done, tended to take about 25 years.

And once you took the Oath of Mourning, it was an Unbreakable Vow, you were bound.

_I am already dead._

Hermione made a calm and quiet journey across the ruined courtyard, past fires of the battle still burning.

She went past Hagrid, who was supervising a burial detail of dwarves, giants, and goblins who would be working all night on interring the many bodies of the dead.

_I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side._

Hagrid called to her.

_I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side. My blood has mingled with his, and we go together._

_ S_he didn't reply.

Finally Hermione had arrived at the Shrieking Shack, where a more gruesome sight than even she had imagined, awaited her.

_ I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side. My blood has mingled with his, and we go together. As in life, so in death._

From the open door issued a it was a horrible trail of mud, blood, and drag marks, culminating in the body of the Headmaster , lying facedown on the ground, about two yards from the Shrieking Shack.

He had reached the end of a long, torturous passage.

Weeping openly, something she hadn't done since she was in second year, Hermione turned him over on his back.

_I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side. My blood has mingled with his, and we go together. As in life, so in death. My life belongs to my Master._

The tough old bastard hadn't gone, easily.

_I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side. My blood has mingled with his, and we go together. As in life, so in death. My life belongs to my Master. My soul belongs to my Master._

Snape had torn his robes to make a bandage around his neck, and had attempted to crawl, whether to find help or die fighting, she didn't know.

Hermione stabbed the dagger into the ground, and began the ritual.

"I am already dead, and my body lies at my Master's side. My blood has mingled with his, and we go together. As in life, so in death. My life belongs to my Master. My soul belongs to my Master..."

There was much more to the oath, but Hermione was to the part where she was obliged to cut her forehead.

**Prince's Potions, Crooked Lane, Wizarding Liverpool.**

**II: Snape**

The appropriate age for a witch or a wizard to become an Acolyte was 15.

In days gone past, this was the age of majority.

The age of majority was now 17, but the age of consent was still 16, and you could still become an Acolyte at 15.

Snape, one of five living Pendragons, Master Magus Magnus, a Master in the Third Degree of all Five Disciplines had never expected, from the collection of fools and idiots he taught to ever find a student worthy of becoming his Acolyte.

Then came Hermione Granger.

Hermione, whose parents were originally from Vauxhall, the working-class neighborhood where Snape still lived, at Spinner's End, had worked for the Prince family business, which he ran with his mother, Eileen Price and his grandparents, Severus and Aphrodite Prince the previous summer, too.

Seeing her skill outside the classroom only served to further convince Snape that Hermione was not merely the brightest witch in her year, but the brightest witch of her generation.

Her mind was hungry for more knowledge, her soul and her heart for a greater discipline, a greater meaning than mere spells, charms and hexes.

Snape had not told Granger he therefore planned to make her his Acolyte, beginning with Magick of the Arts, which encompassed, among other things, potions and compounding, and the Magick of War, which encompassed both defence and offence.

Still, he was angry when she was late for work on the day he had intended to tell her.

"And just where the fuck have you been?"

"I'm only ten minutes late, Professor."

Like a flowing black shadow in his lab robe over his Muggle street clothes, Snape was across the laboratory in two strides, and he had Granger by the arm.

He pulled just a little, and she crashed into him as if he had heaved her.

Her hot little body in an old tee shirt and her school skirt.

Why did she have to wear her school skirt, and rub up against him, oh, why?

Snape tried to keep his interest in Granger cool and dispassionate, but, despite his frosty exterior, he was neither.

As a young man, sex, dope, and booze had almost been the death of him.

He had long since given up dope and booze.

As for Granger, she was only late for one reason and that reason was Viktor Krum.

Granger did not believe in either romance or sentiment, and certainly nothing like love.

She was an earthy, matter-of-fact Lolita who pursued her friendship with benefits with Krum openly and with a single minded intensity that put just about all boys and most men right off her.

Snape hadn't been a boy since he was seven years old, and he was certainly not most men.

Still, had she just come from a roll with that blunt-skulled yob?

Just what was it Humbert Humber had said about Lolita?

Something about the way her named just rolled off his tongue.

_Lo-lee-tah_.

Poor old Humbert.

He went mad for love, if that's what you wanted to call it, of his Loilta.

_His_ Lolita.

All of the sudden Snape felt like a boy of twenty , teaching bored and horny young girls only three or four years his junior.

Don't stand…

…Don't stand…

….Don't stand so close to me.

"Ten minutes is ten minutes too long. Get to work."

She hesitated.

"Get to work, now, Granger. Look sharp!"

He pushed her away.

She didn't seem to want to go.

Humbert Humbert was a teacher.

A professor.

Not after his Lolita got done with him.

And he wasn't trapped in a basement laboratory with her for eight hours every day.

Eight hours in which Granger, a hard worker and a brilliant student, comported herself with the utmost skill and professionalism.

But, how she tortured him.

Mercilessly.

And if not intentionally, then innocently.

In her school skirt, with one knee sock pulled up and the other always falling around her ankles.

There was always an excuse to bend over the table too far so he could see her worn, multiply laundered cotton bikini knickers.

She was a mess, in her sloppy, lopsided pigtails, chewing her lip as she thought, swearing under her breath at the potions that didn't cooperate.

But, what an incandescently brilliant, gorgeous mess she was.

Every time she bent over that table, almost every other thought in Snape's Boeing 747 quad jet-engine mind going a million light years a second was crowded out by the intense visceral need to screw her right into the table.

Snape lit a cigarette, and as she was putting her lab robe on, Granger shot a wistful look at him.

"Erm, bum a fag, Professor?"

Snape shook another fag out of the pack, and gave it to her.

Poor little Lolita.

Maybe, Snape thought, I torture her, too.

He had caught her a few times eyeing him up, looking at him with the huge, desperate eyes of someone who was starving to death.

With friends like Potter and Weasley, she had to be intellectually suffocated, and though Krum was built like a bull and probably had the stamina of one, blunt-skulled, thick, sporting types like him were never known for being great lovers.

Krum's a rough looking yob; she must like ugly, rough-looking yobs.

Snape made himself quit thinking of such things.

He always made himself quit thinking of such things.

He had a standing date with a certain witch on Tuesdays and Thursdays and there were still plenty of them who liked a man ugly, snarky and mean to fill up the rest of the week, if he wanted.

She was only 15, he was going to ask her to be his Acolyte, he was her Professor and, besides, what would she want with the likes of him?

She didn't know what she was doing; she probably acted like that around anyone who wasn't a stupid boy, without even knowing she was doing it.

"Granger, put that cauldron down. This is a very important day in your life. Today we go to see the goblins, and you get your first tattoos. You are going to be my Acolyte. I'll start you in Magick of the Arts and Magick of War. Please raise your left hand for the Acolyte's Oath."

Granger was a smart girl; she knew exactly the responsibility she was taking on, the bond she was accepting to Severus Snape.

Without so much as pulling up her socks, Granger ground the cigarette out under her feet and raised her left hand.

"You don't have to read my part, Professor. I know all the words." She said.

**Harry Potter's Encampment, 1997**

**II: Hermione**

Ron and Harry were in the tent, both of them sleeping.

Hermione couldn't sleep.

There was still a bit of a campfire going, and she sat in front of it, staring into the flames.

Unlike everything else in the world, the fire was lively.

Of course, Hermione knew that wasn't true; there was lots of liveliness in the world.

Even the Wizarding World, even in these dark times.

Death Eaters everywhere were merry in the certainty of their victory.

And their opponents?

Most of them had hope, hope that Harry Potter and his friends were doing something to save them.

They were at least happy in each other's company, happy in their homes, with their families in this time of war and terror.

Even at Hogwarts, occupied as it was by the enemy, well, people were safe, people were warm, weren't they?

Hermione felt as though she would never be warm, or safe, again.

Her hand flew to her right arm, where her Acolyte's tattoo, the first of many magickal tattoos was, and she pressed her hand against it, the way a more religious witch might have clutched at her pentacle, or a Muggle may have grasped his cross.

She searched for her bond with Headmaster Snape under the dark tumult of her emotions.

It was becoming harder and harder to find, but it was always there.

He was always there, himself dark, and tumultuous, but steadfast and certain.

On second thoughts, Hermione decided, Harry was probably not asleep.

Harry hadn't been able to sleep unless he was stone drunk since the end of 5th year, and he had cut back dramatically on his drinking for purposes of their mission.

He had only got sloppy drunk once, the day he and Ron had the fight culminating in them beating the snot out of each other after Ron reminded Harry that he had no family.

He drank two bottles of Hell's Horntail, straight, before falling into a stupor, and Ron refused to put him to bed or clean him up, so Hermione had to do it.

Typically, Harry put away three-quarters of a bottle a day.

And that was decreasing his drinking.

Hermione had no taste for firewhiskey, even the good stuff, but Hell's Horntail was the worst kind of rotgut swill.

It was pretty much just wormwood, dragon's blood and alcohol, comparative to the worst kind of cheap vodka.

The stuff was green, viscous and oily-looking, and Harry breathed green smoke out his nostrils after a long snort.

Snape, she thought, had been trying to help Harry with his drinking problem, but, maybe Harry was beyond help.

Maybe he was better off.

She poked the fire with a stick

Never be warm again, or safe.

"Well, Ron's asleep. Good old Ron. I wish I believed in me as much as he does."

Harry sat down beside her, and had a drink.

"I wish I believed in me as much as you both do."

"You're the best of us, Hermione. You think I believe me own press?"

Harry laughed, mirthlessly, and lit a fag.

"There isn't a toot or a drink or a pill or a smoke in the world to make me dumb enough to buy all that Boy Who Lived bullshit. I'm a shit wizard. My magical skills are laughable. Intellectually, I'm a midget, especially compared to you. I can fly, I can duel, I can fight and I can fuck. That's what I'm good at. I'm just Dumbledore's hit man. You're the brains of the outfit."

Harry took another drink.

"Oh, and I can drink, too."

Harry patted his pockets.

"Erm, bum a fag, Hermione?"

"Take the pack. I have another in me other pocket."

Harry put his arm around her, and Hermione rested her head against him.

"You're thinking about old Snape, aren't you?"

"No." Hermione lied.

"Sure you are. You think about the murdering bastard all the time. It only makes sense. He's your Master. You're his Acolyte. I know it hurts you worse than it hurts me. I witnessed a no-good son of a bitch I was never too fucking fond of murder a man who was to me like the last living member of my family. But you, you saw your mentor, your Master, a wizard you've come to know as well as yourself, a man who's got his bloody ruthless bastard name written on your heart and your soul, well you saw him kill a man like your own grandfather to you in cold blood. And you do it, sober. How do you cope, Hermione?"

Hermione shrugged.

"I know he's not what he seems. I know him better than you do, Harry. Better than almost anyone at Hogwarts. I know his family, I know the place where he grew up. I'm a Scouser, too. You can take me out of Liverpool, but you'll never take the 'Pool out of me. I lived in Vauxhall with my parents until I was eight, and we moved to Woolton. Spinner's End was only a few blocks from our house. Snape's ten years younger than my father; they knew each other growing up. But even in his best moment, Snape's a pitiless bastard, a real villain. He's a man of very little warmth, a rough-looking, tough, merciless, two-tone son of a bitch. Diamond hard, a ruthless, vicious, snarky brute. But, where we come from, that's what a man is supposed to be. If he isn't, he doesn't survive. Only cream and bastards rise, where we come from. Snape's both."

Harry coughed and chuckled, wryly, at the same time.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"Yes. It is. Snape's a good man. A brave man. He's saved your life many times, and he was the only person on the faculty to notice or care that you were becoming a drunk and a degenerate. This is all part of the plan. Albus' plan. Which included his own death. I'm sure of that.""

"I wish I could be." Harry replied.

He finished his smoke.

"What are you doing out here, Hermione? Hoping the cold air seeps into your knickers? That's not going to help. I know. I've tried."

"What are you on about?"

"Don't play dumb with me! I know all about you and Viktor Krum. And this weird fatal attraction you have to the old Snape. I'll tell you one thing. Running blindly into Ron's arms isn't going to fix things for you. The sooner you let him down, easy, the better off he'll be. Not that you'd be any warmer in there with Ron than you are out here in the cold. I can hear him snoring away. And I can hear what you're doing, over there in your bunk."

Hermione pulled away from Harry, flinching as if he'd slapped her.

"You drunken bastard, is that why you've come out here? Because you miss having at least three witches hanging from the end of your dick every day, and you figure, well, maybe Hermione's good for a blow through! It's war, after all, and we might all be dead tomorrow, and nothing matters, really, so, why the fuck not? And there's nothing between Snape and I, he's never touched me!" she snapped.

"That's about it." Harry agreed.

"You're lucky I don't smear your neb all over your boatrace! Go fuck yourself!" She told Harry.

She left the warm fire and went off into the woods, where it was cold and dark and feral.

Harry followed her.

In the woods, in the night, under the chill, pale moon, it didn't seem important, whether she screamed, or not.

Not in the woods.

Cold and dark and feral.

* * *

><p>Snape had once told her that the idea of a taboo was a dangerous thing.<p>

"A little thing like a taboo can be a powerful tool in the hands of an enemy. Because once he's seduced you into breaking a taboo, and showing you how easy it was to do, he's got a hook in you. To invite you to break some more. Remember this, Granger. Nothing is taboo. That's not to say that everything is permitted. There are many perfectly logical, rational reasons why you should not steal from your friends, commit murder, eat the dead, or commit incest. But, if you can think of no logical reason why you shouldn't want something, or have something, other than you're not supposed to, it's a meaningless taboo. Meaningless and dangerous. Break your taboos before they are used to break you."

"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible." Hermione muttered, gathering her clothes in the dark.

"Huh?"

"Nothing, Harry. Put your kit on, then."

"No, you said 'Nothing is true, everything is permissible?' Is that what you and Snape did together, then? Chain-smoke, quote the Beats, and congratulate yourselves on how fucking liberated you were? Snape doesn't strike me as the type. But you do."

Harry reached for his pants.

"Are you going to be nasty to me now, is that it?"

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I can't help it. I'm jealous."

"Of Snape? We never done it. I told you that."

"Of both of you. Regardless of whether you done it with him or not. You have something to live for."

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, A few nights later**

**III: Snape**

Snape was alone in his dungeon rooms, staring into the roaring fire when his reverie was interrupted by a knock on his door.

He ignored it.

"Severus?"

He ignored that, too.

"Severus, open this door! I know you're in there. Brooding. Thinking dark, evil thoughts. The very blackest. Let me in."

His visitor was not going to go away, so Snape took the wards off the door and the locks, and went back to his chair before the fire.

The wizard who entered the room had made his way through the castle without being recognized, per se, but he had certainly been noticed.

He was a tall, angular, distinguished looking fellow in the prime of life, immaculately dressed in clothing that combined the nattiest and most fashionable aspects of Muggle suits and wizard's robes. He had exquisitely barbered black hair greying slightly at the temples, and a neatly goatish Van Dyke beard. His face was blandly handsome, but for the eyes which were greenish-yellow, and his pupils very black indeed.

On nine of his ten fingers, there were Nine familiar golden Rings.

A gift from his father.

Everyone who had seen the wizard had to look twice, because they were sure they had just seen the Devil, himself.

Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, disguised himself as a noseless, smoke-faced monstrosity, and posed as some kind of comic-opera Hitler, because he knew that his true identity, and his true mission would have horrified even the most black-heated of his ardent Death Eaters.

The truth, however, had always been known to the evil Pendragon's Acolyte, Severus Tobias Snape.

And his enemy, the Pendragon Albus Dumbledore.

Who also had as his Acolyte, the Pendragon Severus Tobias Snape.

Tom Riddle was not actually the Devil, but he was of Hell and from it.

Tom Riddle's father was not the Muggle his mother briefly married.

Her family, though not aristocratic, was prominent in the circles of those were deeply involved in the Dark Arts.

In Tom's case, from as far back as the Age of the Rings, to preserve their ties in blood and Black Magick to their Hellish masters, once in every seven generations they performed an obscene and forbidden ritual, involving the seventh daughter of the seventh son of the main branch of the family line and a demon.

Tom was the direct result of such a union, and as Merope's branch of the Gaunt family was already thoroughly infused with demonic blood, he was quite probably more demon than man.

No one, not even Tom Riddle, himself, could be sure of the particulars of his own parentage, but considering the stature of his mother's family and their long history of practicing the Dark Arts, his father, may indeed have been Lucifer, himself.

His mission was far more horrifying than the enforcement of crackpot neo-Nazi racial theories.

For more than one reason, Hell would hold no surprises for Tom Riddle.

It was not enough for him to be a at least half a demon, the spawn of Hell, and a Pendragon by the time he was 25.

Like every son of a famous or infamous father, young Tom Riddle wanted to surpass him.

If he truly was the son of Satan, that was a tall order.

Of course, he could have achieved it by turning his back on his demonic nature and embracing that part of him that was man rather than demon, good rather than Evil, but that was not the direction in which Tom Marvolo Riddle wanted to proceed.

For he was both profoundly evil and completely mad.

He was never a sane or a decent man, but he was rather in the same faintly ridiculous league as his good friend and companion Crowley until around World War II.

Riddle spent the whole of the Thirties in Egypt and the Far East looking for an original copy of the _Necronomicon_, and, unfortunately for him and the rest of the world, he found what he was looking for, in the Mad Arab's own handwriting.

Whatever beings he called upon or realms he visited or obscene knowledge he gained put him right around the twist.

He came back to England, applied to be Hogwarts DADA professor, and fell in love for the first and last time in his perverted and twisted life, with his best friend Severus Prince's s 13-year old daughter, Eileen.

After they became engaged, she was the first one he outlaid his mad plan to, and in the same gruesome and horrifying detail he would to her son, years later.

It would be enough to make Severus Snape turn his back on the man who might have been his father, a man he was closer to than anyone else on God's Green Erath, even his original Master Albus Dumbledore.

It was enough to send young Eileen Prince her fleeing into the Muggle world to abort Voldemort's child, rush into the dubious but understanding arms of Tobias Snape, and become a junkie for the next fifteen years or so.

She was only 15, herself at the time.

Needless to say, Tom didn't get the DADA job, either.

He came up with the "I Am Lord Voldemort" scheme after finding the phrase in one of his old schoolbooks, and began to finance his plot with pureblood money and ill-gotten gains from the worst kind of vices.

Of course, when you mix Black Magic with the rackets, hard drugs, murder, sadism and white slavery, then the real fun begins.

People started to die in appalling numbers, until Harry Potter stopped the old demon in his diabolical tracks.

Severus Snape and Eileen Prince were the only people Tom Riddle had ever outlaid his mad plan to bring a sort of cosmic, interdimensional, existential Hell not just to Earth, but to the Universe, itself.

The metaphysical core of his mad rantings haunted both of them.

Every minute of every day of their lives.

They had ever spoke of it, not even to each other, because both Eileen Prince and her son were determined that what the son of Satan found in that obscene book in the ancient desert, and the unholy marriage of evil that he imagined needed to die with the old sinner

The sooner, the better.

As for Tom Riddle, he knew that his heir had finally managed to do the impossible, and serve both his Masters when he killed Dumbledore.

What he was not sure of was if Snape continued to serve him, if he was serving Albus Dumbledore beyond the grave, or if he was just serving himself.

In the end, Voldemort didn't care.

If Harry Potter defeated him, Snape would be welcomed as a conqueror into the bosom of the Wizarding World.

And if everything went according to Tom's plans, then Snape would be welcomed as a conqueror into the bosom of the New World.

Even if he failed, his Heir would still triumph, so, either way, he won.

And the ends do justify the means.

Severus, however, did not look triumphant this evening.

"You look wretched, Severus. Every time I see you, you look a little more wretched. And it's becoming impossible for you to hide the hateful looks your give me."

The Master sat down in the chair opposite his Acolyte, and poured himself a cup of tea.

"D'you expect me to believe that you are frightened of me, Tom?"

"Certainly I do! You killed Albus, didn't you? You can off me, join forces with Potter, set Malfoy at your right hand and Lupin at your left and rule the world, while you train your Heir, Granger, to replace you once you've died. You've no passion for my goal, the real one or the pretend one, and no compassion for almost any living creature that walks, crawls, or flies over the surface of the Earth. Whether you've never forgiven me for your precious Lily Evans, who left you flat for not just another man, but your worst enemy, or you're looking forward to avenging her rejection of you by delivering her son to death at my hands, you'd still kill me and step over my bones on your way to the dais to take your position as Emperor of the Wizarding World. I know you, Severus. I was very nearly your father. And I chose you to be my Acolyte for a reason."

Snape didn't argue.

"It will only be a little while longer, you know." Tom assured him.

"You do know, Tom, if this war you've instigated harms my Acolyte, you had better run back to Hell, because I'll come for you. If you're not dead I'll kill you, in the old way, the only way to kill a demon. If you are dead, I'll descend into Hell to revenge myself on you. And if we're both in Hell, I'll steal the sword from your father, the Devil's hands and cut your head off with it. But not until after I've cut off your limbs, eviscerated you, torn out your beating heart from your bloody torso and finally, cut off your screaming head."

"After which you'll burn the lot to ash and then throw my head in after it into the fires of Mount Doom, itself, listening to my head scream all the way down until I return from whence I came? I expect no less from you. Severus. No harm will come to your Hermione Granger. And I will not kill Harry Potter, either. Dead, he's a martyr to Dumbledore's cause. Alive, and turned to my way of thinking, his followers will lose their last hope, and soon fall in line."

"If you turn him, or Granger, I'll kill them both, myself. And you'll be next." Snape growled.

"Did I say I would turn them? They'll turn on their own. In the end, everyone will. Goodness is a rape. Evil is always a seduction."

Tom Riddle finished his tea, and lit a cigar.

"You know where she is. Go and see her. I won't follow you. All that business about horcruxes, we know that's a red herring. I can promise you I won't kill your Acolyte, but I do not speak for every combatant in this war."

"And you haven't promised me that you won't kill me first before I have a chance to kill you."

"Come to think of it, Severus, I haven't."

Snape laughed.

"And they say I'm a wicked old screw."

Tom Riddle laughed, too.

"Oh, but you are, Severus. Sometimes I think you're even more wicked than I am."

"What about a fucking cigar, then?"

"Certainly, Severus. Anything for my Heir. How is your mother? Is she well? Is that pirate of a father of yours treating her decently? How are things at the shop?..."

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 1995**

**III: Hermione**

Hermione found that Snape was always exhausted by his Occulumency lessons with Harry.

Harry couldn't clear his mind, and not just because clearing your mind was impossible for a 15 year old.

It also had something to do with the disturbing transformation that had begun to overtake Harry in 4th year.

He had started to become something of a yobbo.

He started using the Marauder's Map to occasionally sneak off to Knockturn Alley, and he'd bring back a six pack of Merlyn's lager, or something.

Or ask Hermione to use episkey on him, after he'd got into a fight.

Shortly after he fought the dragon at the Ti-Wizard Tournament he went bragging to her and Ron that he wasn't a virgin, anymore, and while he was working on his last clue for the Tri-Wizard cup, Hermione saw him taking nips of firewhiskey from a mithril flask.

He explained that he had won the flask in a duelling contest.

Wizards Harry's age were not permitted to undertake duels, and it was illegal to duel for prizes or money.

Over the summer, Harry had only honed his bad habits.

She went to visit him at the Dursleys only to find he and Dudley in Dudley's room, drinking beer, smoking weed and listening to the Rolling Stones.

Hermione did not object to the Rolling Stones.

Even after she sat beside Ron, on an August outing to a pub in Knockturn Alley, and watched Harry beat the fuck out of a wizard he'd beat in a duel who was a sore loser and broke a bottle over his head.

To the tune of "_Gimme Shelter_" playing in the background.

Nasty stuff.

By this point, Harry was self-medicating with firewhiskey and beer and also weed and pills to keep his demons at bay, and he was out almost every night, in the pursuit of wine, women and song, with Ginny Weasley riding shotgun.

Hermione worried about Ginny, too.

She had changed after the affair in the Chamber of Secrets and not for the better.

The Killer Queen of the Quidditch pitch, while a serious student and a drug free teetotaler was an unregistered lioness animagus who was both promiscuous and ultraviolent; rumor had it that she was fighting the war all on her own by bloodily murdering Death Eaters in the street.

All in all, Harry's lifestyle made Occulumency difficult for him.

Snape knew what was waiting for Harry at the end of the road.

He was a chain smoker and a heavy drinker when he arrived at Hogwarts in his first year, and an alcoholic and opiate addict who funded a cabal for hard-living young Acolytes in Sex Magick when he was Harry's age.

If anyone was the right one for the task of trying to divert Harry from the road of excess, it was Snape.

Because, if Harry was a yobbo, then Snape, he was a right villain, covered in magical tattoos and battle scars to prove it.

That night when Hermione was finished with her homework, she went to visit her Master in his private rooms in the dungeon not so much for instruction, but just to keep him company.

When she arrived, he was parked in front of his illegal telly, with a book in his lap, smoking, dressed only in his favorite pair on ancient black Levis.

In them, Snape was more substantial than you would have suspected.

He was about six feet tall, maybe a little more, and although he was thin, he had a wiry, rawboned build, with broad shoulders and long, flat muscles.

Built like a welterweight boxer, he was all bone, muscle and sinew.

His arms and legs were very long, and he had very large hands, with long fingers, he had a long, beaky nose, of course and a long lantern jaw.

Some of the witches who had secret dreams about the Potions Master imagined that his hair was silky rather than greasy, but they were wrong.

Greasy, thick, coarse and straight.

Not only that, Snape also had coarse black hair on his arms, his chest, his belly and she figured, probably on his legs, as well.

When he saw her, he closed the book and smiled a little, revealing a mouthful of wayward teeth and gold crowns that her father had done for him, over the years.

Snape's arms were heavily tattooed with magical symbols and signs, all of them Goblin tattoos.

He had one tattoo on his left breast, and another, of a dragon, that wrapped up around his waist and belly and disappeared down his waistband.

Some of the symbols were so arcane Hermione was surprised anyone but her knew them, and a good deal of them did prove that Snape was indeed a practitioner of all of the Five Ancient Disciplines of High Ceremonial Magick.

Such esoteric relics of the days of old, dating back to the days before even the Wars of the Ring were not readily taught, anymore, but there were witches and wizards who still did things the old way, who knew the old secrets and the ancient mysteries.

Snape was a Master in the highest Degree, the Third Degree, of all Five Disciplines.

After all, the man could _fly_.

The general effect of it all was that it made him look like a wily, ugly old Pirate King, Hermione always thought.

He was an ugly man, true, but men weren't supposed to be pretty and smooth and flawless like little girls, were they?

"I've got you something. A prezzie for your birthday. Let me go and find it." He muttered.

Hermione was touched.

She had gotten an owl from her parents, but other than that, in the confusion of the Umbridge Occupation and the organization of Dumbledore's Army and all the rest of it, everyone, even Harry and Ron, had completely forgotten that it was Hermione's' birthday.

Her 16th birthday.

She had been planning to spend it with Viktor, good old Viktor, who never put Hermy-own-ninny last, and had been looking forward to spending their first legal night together in some swank hotel, where she'd maybe have a glass of champagne, and a nice dinner and then all night it would be shag, shag, shag, in some insanely ornate and enormous bed.

That was what Viktor had planned for her, but his Quiddtich schedule was changed at the last minute and he had to play a game in Novgorod, which was in Siberia.

Maybe Snape wasn't going to take her tripping merrily through the garden of carnal delights, which as a Third Degree Master of Sex Magick, he could probably have done even better than Viktor, but at least he remembered her birthday.

"What are you doing? Fucking turn off the telly and get in here, then!" Snape snapped from his bedroom.

Hermione had been in said room several times, to fetch this or get that, so she followed him in.

"Mind, it's heavy." He said.

Hermione unwrapped the green and black iridescent wrapping paper and sucked in her breath.

Inside the box was a mithril cauldron, a mithril mortar and pestle, a mithril mixing wand, and a little mithril cauldron-stove.

They were obviously Elvish made, and probably dated back to the 1500's.

"Snape, I can't accept this gift. These are priceless objects."

"Yes you can. You're an Acolyte of a Pendragon, one of Five in the world, you had better start using the best tools."

"But it must have cost you two years' salary!"

"It didn't. Potter isn't the only one who knows where a wizard can make good in a dueling contest. And no one can beat me. It was a good job finding an idiot with an antique supply shop who was willing to try. Go on and put them in my lab. I don't want you using them in class, they're too good for the likes of those yobs."

"They're too good for me, Snape."

"Nothing's too good for you, Granger. You're my Acolyte."

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. May, 1998**

**IV: Harry**

"Hagrid, has Hermione come this way?"

"That she did, 'Arry. I called aht t'er, an' she didn't hardly turn 'er 'ead."

"I think she's going to the Shrieking Shack. For…the Headmaster. I've got to stop her! If she takes that Oath, she can kiss 25 years of her life goodbye!"

Hagrid put his hand on Harry's arm, and spoke as gently as possible.

"'Arry, lad, our 'Ermione's life is lyin' dead on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. If she takes the Oath, she'll find the strength to go on living. Best to let her go, and do what she has to do."


	2. Duty, Dignity Decency

**Chapter Two: Duty, Dignity, Decency**

_(Author's note: For pictures of Snape, as I write him, click the link to my deviantART page, located on my profile page)_

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. May, 1998. Night of the Final Battle**

**I: Hermione**

Hermione lifted the knife to her forehead but then paused, paused, looking down at Snape' sweaty, bloody, dirty lifeless face.

"I thought this would somehow make me feel better, you know. Mutilating myself and saying goodbye to at least the next seven years of my life. But it doesn't. And it won't will, it? If you were alive, you'd tell me I was being a sentimental fool. Nothing can change the fact that you're dead. It's my fault. I should have come to you, sooner. How will I ever explain myself to them, Snape? What will they all say, when they ask me if I'm glad you were one of the good guys and I say that it makes no difference to me? That I'd rather have you alive and evil than good and dead? What good are you to me dead, you bastard? What will I do, without you? Even in 7 years? Or 25? I never thought you'd be the one to die. Even when I was a kid, you were like an indestructible monolith. What was there on Earth, in the Muggle or Wizarding worlds, that could kill a Snape? I thought I had more time. Why did I think I had more time? What was I waiting for? It doesn't matter now, though. Because you're dead. And you can't hear a word I'm bloody saying.!"

Tears began to roll out of Hermione's eyes.

"Who can I find that could ever begin to replace you? Queen Guinevere, she went to a convent, after Arthur divorced her. Maybe I'll join the Orders, after my seven years. There was no King, no man greater than Arthur. And there can be no Wizard, no man, greater than Severus Snape."

She cried, bitterly and a few of her tears had splashed onto Snape's face.

Angrily, Hermione rubbed her eyes with her fists and chastised herself.

"Stupid old fool! What are you crying over, Hermione Jean Granger? He'd dead, and that's all. You blew it. " She told herself.

She noticed the clean streak that her tears left on Snape's filthy face.

"Gods, I wish I had brought a little soap and water! How could they leave you here like this? Doesn't anyone care, but me? They never did, did they?"

Hermione pulled the sleeve of her robe up over her hand, to wipe off her dead Master's face.

To her surprise, he did not feel cold.

On the contrary, his skin was warm, and clammy.

No, hot and clammy.

Like he had a fever and he was sweating.

Fever?

Sweating?

If he had a fever and he was sweating, that meant he was still alive.

Hermione put her hand under the makeshift bandage on the Headmaster's throat.

On the uninjured side, she felt a weak but steady pulse under her fingers.

Wildly, Hermione laughed.

"Snape, you old bastard, you're not dead! You're not bleedin' dead! Maybe there's a happy ending for the likes of us, after all! Snape? Snape, it's me! It's Granger! Can you hear me?"

She was shouting, why, she didn't know.

If he was in a coma, her shouting couldn't bring him out of it.

There was one thing that might work.

She rummaged in her pockets, and came up with a vial of Prince's Reviving Balm.

Her eyes watered halfway down her head, even putting the tiniest drop of the noxious stuff on her finger, but when she rubbed it under Snape's nose, it had the desired effect.

He gasped and coughed, and his eyes fluttered open.

They were full of pain, and confusion, but they locked upon hers.

One thing about Snape, he had Rasputin eyes; dark, hypnotic and compelling, like the powerful wizard known to Muggles as the Mad Monk.

He could seize you with them and hold you fast to the spot, such that you couldn't escape.

Snape could make grown men cry with a single look, and if Hermione had a pound for every time she saw him turn a student to a pile of jelly with just his pitiless gaze, she'd have quite a nice piece of change.

But he had never looked that way at her, and he wasn't looking that way at her, now.

_"Can you hear me, Granger?"_

Snape had not spoken to her, but she heard him just the same.

Telepathy was possible between Master and Acolyte, but only if their bond was sufficiently strong.

Hermione suddenly felt as though no force in the vast and infinite universe, was stronger.

"I hear you, Snape."

"_Don't take me to St. Mungo's. Those quacks will murder me. Take me home. My Mum and my grandfather are both Third Degree Masters in Magick of the Arts and of War. If anyone can save my miserable life, they can._"

**Spinner's End. Vauxhall, Liverpool, 1998**

The sun rose, and set again before Hermione finally got a chance to smoke a cigarette.

She stepped out onto the porch of Snape's home in working-class Vauxhall, in their native Liverpool, at the last house on Spinner's End, along the banks of the muddy Mersey.

Home again.

Hermione's father, Dr. John Granger, a prominent dentist only now recently returned from a mysterious vacation with his wife, Olive, that he could not quite remember, was now a successful man with a comfortable home in middle-class Woolton, but he had grown up in Vauxhall, and lived at Spinner's End.

John Granger was about ten years older than Toby Snape, but they were both lifelong residents of the End and Vauxhall, and they often spent time together at the local.

Although John Granger was a dentist, he was the only medical man that Toby Snape trusted; it was to John Granger's office that he brought himself and his son for any medical problems, from lumps and bruises to colds and flu, even the occasional stitches or broken bones that he did not trust to the vagaries of Wizarding healing.

The Snapes were often in John Granger's office.

They were THAT family, and on a street like Spinner's End, that was really saying something.

Eileen Snape was reputed to be some kind of gypsy, or witch.

She never worked, but whatever it was she did, witch or gypsy, when people who lived on the Spinner's End got sick, they went to see Eileen; she was better than the National Health.

She was a beautiful woman, uncommonly so, but mean as a snake, an ill-tempered junkie who spent most of her money on dope, and most of her time on finding a new yobbo to get drunk and high with, and shag.

None of them could touch the heights of villainy of her husband, Toby, a sailor who spent much of his time when he wasn't at sea engaged in drinking, fighting and the occasional petty crime.

Toby and Eileen couldn't see to live with each other, nor could they live without one another. They were as notorious for their fights as they were for the enthusiastic way in which they made up.

Somehow, in the midst of it, they raised up their son, an unpleasant lad saddled with the unpleasant name of Severus Snape.

And being smart enough to go off to some fancy boarding school when he was just a boy didn't stop Sev Snape from living up to his full potential.

He was the terror of Vauxhall as a teenager, having his mother's intelligence and his father's brutality.

A wiry, thin, whipcord-taut heavily tattooed yob of a drunken junkie in long greasy hair and a greasy goatee, enforcing the iron will of some heavy or the other, selling every kind of dope you could think of, paying you in your own blood if you couldn't pay him; raising six kinds of hell day in and day out.

His neighbours weren't too surprised that when he grew to be a man he sobered up, settled his act down and became a professor at that school he went to, but without really ever surrendering his reputation as a real villain of a Scouser hard nut.

Men like Sev Snape were too tough and too smart to die from the excesses of their misspent youth; as there would be no leaving a good-looking corpse for the likes of them at any age, they'd live long lives, ossifying into tough old men hard as diamonds who could reduce some punk chav to jelly with a withering look.

If anybody in the neighbourhood saw Sev Snape being carried into his garage, unconscious and covered in blood, it wasn't the first time, and they were pretty damn sure it wouldn't be the last.

Hermione was glad they were all so bloody sure, because after what she'd seen, she wasn't.

Hermione staggered down to the rusty chain link fence that marked the terminus of Snape's property, and watched the muddy Mersey roll by.

A motion light came on, along the side of the house and Hermione looked at the backs of her hands and saw they were all covered in blood.

Snape's blood.

The sight hardly alarmed Hermione.

At his request, she had flooed Snape's mother and grandfather from what was left of Hogwarts Castle, and they had been waiting in the garage that Tobias Snape had built in the back garden of the house at Spinners' End, to some interesting specifications, to serve as his wife's lab.

They came with a thick slab of a man, shorter than Snape or his mother.

He was probably only five feet six or so, but you wouldn't notice it, because he was so powerfully built.

The legs that stuck out from under his kilt looked like the trunks of hundred-year old oak trees; his arms were equally massive and his broad chest was a solid wall of granite and coarse ginger hair, sticking out in all directions from his white wife beater undershirt.

The leonine head that sat on top of it was equally fearsome, without benefit of a neck and crowned by thick, coarse ginger waves and wreathed in a ginger beard at the end of a lantern jaw.

With a mouth set in fierce determination under the beak of a bird of prey.

He held Snape down, as Eileen Prince, a tall, supernaturally beautiful, willowy woman with black hair and black eyes took the mithril knife, glowing blue with Elvish fire from the cheekily goatish-looking fellow whom anyone might recognize from his portrait at Hogwarts as the retired Potions Master from Hogwarts, Severus Prince.

Of course Hermione knew the Princes, she had worked with them for years.

Eileen had asked her to come closer, and hold a mithril bowl close to Snape's head, as she unwound the bandages from around his neck.

The sight and smell of the wound made everything Hermione had eaten all week rise into her throat.

"I'm going to be sick. I'm going to be sick!" she cried.

"Ellie, didn't you give our Hermione some of the Cast-Iron Stomach potion? Don't be ashamed. We've all had a draught, or we'd be sick, too. Here you are. Take two gulps." The former Potions Master suggested.

Severus Sr. had already made her put on protective robes and he cast a spell over her that she recognized from her study with Snape in Magic of War; it was a Master's spell, complex and protective.

She took the vial from him, drank two gulps, and handed it back.

Hermione only understood why all of this was necessary when Eileen cut into the hideously swollen, infected, and already partially necrotized flesh that had once been her son's long, sinewy neck.

Snape had been mercifully unconscious, but his eyes snapped open and he let out and he let out a sound that would have been a scream, had his vocal cords not been paralyzed by the bite.

His body jumped like that of a fish fighting for its life on the end of a hook, and it was all the ginger Scotsman could do to hold him down.

At the same time, a horrible torrent of venom, pus, blood and gore burst out of the incision in a foul-smelling gush.

Hermione caught it in the cauldron.

That was the worst bit.

It made the part where Eileen cleaned out the inside of the wound and scraped away the flesh that that venom had eaten away look like an anticlimax.

Then, she and Severus Sr. administered a course of potions and spells that would have been unrecognizable to a witch or wizard who wasn't at least an Acolyte in Magick of War, and Magick of the Arts.

In addition to the usual fever reducing, blood-replenishing and strengthening potions.

As Snape's Acolyte, Hermione did the spells with them, and gifted Acolyte that she was, mixed up the new batches of potion, in- between.

Because they had to repeat the whole ritual four more times over the next 22 hours or so, as the wound kept filling up with venom and poison and infection.

Finally, at the end, there was precious little of Snape's neck and shoulder left in that area where he had been bitten.

The poison had eaten away much of his muscle and flesh, and Eileen and Severus Sr. had to remove the rest of it, right down to his bones.

Which looked both greenish and spongy.

Eileen and Severus, exhausted, took a short rest while Hermione de-boned Snape's neck, shoulder, left arm, and a few of his ribs on the left side.

She had to inject him with the Skele-Gro.

The Scotsman was dozing, fitfully, in a chair and Hermione woke him.

She was surprised to see him home; Toby Snape was usually to sea until June, and for a short voyage in November, and then after Chrimble, to sea until the middle of March, and then to sea again from the middle of May until the middle of June, or so.

Maybe he had stayed home more, during this last year of war.

"Toby. Wake up, then."

Eileen still chastised Hermione for calling her "Mrs. Snape" all the time, and she always called Severus Sr. "Mr. Prince" and Aphrodite "Mrs. Prince", but nobody ever called Toby either "Mister", or "Snape."

He was "Toby" and his son was "Snape" and that was an end to it.

"Huh? Wot?"

"He's going to wake up when his bones grow back; you'll have to hold him down, because it's going to be horrible painful."

He got up.

"Is this the last of it? You might as well let him die than to make the lad suffer like this. It's about killed me." He replied, in a thick Scouse accent, thick as Snape's.

"Don't say that, Toby." Hermione replied, sharply.

It was a warm spring night, but Hermione shivered as if it was still January.

"I'm sorry, our Hermione. You're a good lass, aren't you? Even though me stupid son 'asn't done well by you at all, 'as 'e? Our Sev's never brought you to West Darby, to Ellie's parents. It's a nice place. Not like this crumbling old shack our Sev clings to. He's like as not afraid Dr. John will twig to it and kill him, I expect. As if your John was an idiot and didn't know. Still, I'm glad he kept the old place. When Eliie and I have our rows, it's back here I go. Sometimes to Sev's scowling face. He likes a bit of mystery, my boy do. But there's no mystery to him. Magick and all that shite aside, he's my son, sure as if he'd grown out of the top of me head. That's why he's stayed alive so long, and it's why this won't kill him. He's a Snape." Tobias said, proudly.

"There's nothing to twig to, is there?" Hermione protested.

"Bullshit! You can't hide behind all that magick lot with me, Hermione Granger. I'm just a man, aren't I? You're here because that's your man lying there half-dead, and you'll do what needs to be done, even if it's give him your blood to see him well, again. Just because he's not done anything about it, because you're just a kid, that doesn't mean nothing's there. Come on, then. Let's get this over with. God willing, Sev'll live long enough to 'ave 'alf a chance to remedy 'is mistakes. Pay you back for your devotion in summat more than meanness."

Hermione wasn't sure what to say to that.

Finally, after the Skele-Gro, Eileen applied a salve to the wound made of athelas leaves and various other ingredients that didn't exist anymore unless you knew where to find them.

They would accelerate the speed at which Snape would heal.

When the flesh had grown over his bones again, raw and pink and new, Eileen and Severus Sr. carefully bathed Snape, finally cleaning all the blood and mud and horrors off of him, and bandaged him.

His father picked up his grown son and carried him back to the house and put him to bed.

Hermione took the opportunity to go into the toilet in the garage, and do all the puking she had wanted to do for 24 hours.

It was a bad business, all her crying and puking, but no-one discovered her in her moment of weakness, at least.

Hermione finished her cigarette.

She went back into the house and went upstairs, took a shower and put on clean clothes.

Her father had driven her car, a 1979 Mini with magical modifications, over, after Hermione used a complicated packing and travelling spell to pack what she needed and load the boot.

Severus and Eileen and Aphrodite had the shop to run, and Toby was to ship out in a few days.

Eileen would help, but Hermione would be doing the lion's share of looking after Snape, in his convalescence.

She didn't mind.

After all, an Acolyte's place is at her Master's side.

Hermione slept for a whole day.

And awoke to discover that while she slept, and despite his wishes, Snape's mother had decided to admit him to St. Mungo's.

Just for good measure.

Especially since he wouldn't wake up.

Still, it was considered a medical miracle by the staff there that Headmaster Snape had survived, even with the expert treatment of two Third Degree Masters.

He was partially paralyzed down the entire left side of his body, the side on which he was bitten by Nagini.

His medi-witches and wizards didn't expect him to survive the week.

If he did, he was expected to be confined to a wheelchair, at best, and, at worst, to remain a drooling vegetable for the next hundred years or so of his natural life.

During the most dire phase of his hospital stay, the week in which Snape did not regain consciousness, Hermione, his devoted and newly-vindicated acolyte did not leave his hospital room.

Not even to attend Fred's funeral, she sent her condolences to the Weasleys by floo.

Explaining that Snape could either regain consciousness, die, or do both at any moment; and she had promised him that she would nurse him when he was sick, and be present at the hour of his death.

Harry told her later that Ron had a huge fit, and that Arthur had grabbed him by both his arms and explained to him that Fred had already gone to his reward in paradise, and that funerals were more for the living than the dead.

And as such, Ron who was alive and well, needed Hermione less than Snape did.

Because it was probable that the Headmaster would soon be among the dead.

Indeed, Hermione was not Snape's only visitor; his family visited him every day.

Severus Sr. brought his grandson a present of a handsome walking stick; the kind in which he could hide his wand.

He didn't seem to think Snape was going to be in a wheelchair, or dead.

Sibyl Trelawney visited him on Tuesday and Thursday.

She seemed confident that he would get well, and discussed the diet she had prepared for him with Eileen.

Who agreed it was a good idea, but that you'd never get Sev to eat any of it.

Lucius Malfoy even took time away from his grimly busy new position at the Ministry as Chief Special Prosecutor to visit his oldest and best friend, twice.

Harry's attitude towards Snape had changed, completely, after having seen Snape's memories; he also visited three times.

But, Hermione literally refused to leave his side.

She bathed in his bathroom and slept in a rollaway bed in the room; she ate her meals there; no one could persuade her to so much as go outside and get a little fresh air.

After a week of same, Hermione was beginning to look a little ill, herself.

Fortunately for both of them, Snape continued to surprise the experts.

Hermione had fallen asleep in a chair, by the bed, when she was awakened by the sound of the toilet flushing.

She opened her eyes and saw that the bed was empty and the walking stick was gone.

By the time she had got to her feet, Snape was making his way out of the bathroom.

Leaning heavily on the cane, which he gripped awkwardly in his awkward left hand, dragging his left leg.

But, he was walking.

"_What the fuck am I doing here? Never mind, you can tell me once I'm gone. Now, how am I to do this? Granger, let me lean on your shoulder, I need both me hands to put me shirt on_."

He looked at his boots in despair.

"I'll help you with those, Snape. Just until you're better."

"_Granger, you're barking mad. No one's done that ritual in a thousand years. You look horrible and you smell worse. Go home. If I need you, I will call you_."

"No, Snape. I won't go. You need me. I'm your Acolyte. You are my Master. I took an Unbreakable Vow, remember? I told you the terms of it in my letter. Unless you flay the tattoos from my body and plunge the ceremonial dagger into me heart, I will never leave your side, again."

"_You don't men that literally, do you, Granger_?"

"Until you're well I bloody well do!"

The Headmaster sighed.

"_I'm not all as sick as these fucking idiots at this slaughterhouse of a hospital made out, am I? I'll bet they had you convinced I was going to be a drooling idiot in a wheelchair."_

"You're still going to need me."

"_Why? I can write with my right hand, too. And do just about everything else. Well, my shoes are going to be a bit dodgy. And shaving is right out. Alright, maybe I will need a little seeing to. For a few weeks, or something. The first thing I want you to do is hold the bloody door open. I'm checking myself out of this shithole_."

"But you need more care!"

"_I may. If I do. I'll get it from Poppy Pomfrey. At my school. With my little bastard students. Where I belong. Where I can trust the healer. Here, I've never seen these boots before_."

"They're made of Nagini's skin. Neville brought them for you. Neville Longbottom. You should have seen him, Snape. He killed Nagini, just like he was a wizard warrior from the Wars of the Ring!"

Snape held out his right foot, then his left, and looked at the boots.

"Now, all I need is a bit of Tom's hide to bind my spell book in. Did anyone make sue his body was subjected to the ritual to kill the demon in him? If not, we'll have to dig the bastard up. Yesterday."

"Lord Malfoy, Harry, and I took care of that. Harry's been to visit you, three times. He left this gift for you."

Snape opened the box Hermione handed him.

On top of the packing material was a bit of parchment.

_Snape, _

_ Because an Acolyte should never be parted from his Master. Even by death._

_ Potter_

Snape removed the packing material.

In the box was a human skull, fashioned into a mug, with the hand fashioned into the mug's handle.

It has been coated in pewter, and edged with gold.

On the underside, in gold leaf, was engraved "Master Magus Magnus Tom Marvolo Riddle , Lord Voldemort, son of Lucifer, the Light Bringer. 31 December, 1916 – 2 May, 1998. Burn in Hell."

The way the mug was constructed, the skull was still screaming in the final agony of it's unfortunate owner.

Snape held the mug out, like Hamlet had, with poor Yorick.

"_And you were worried, Tom, that this war would part us, forever. Now, we'll drink together, and have a smoke, you and I, every day. Until the day I die_."

Snape smiled at his own joke, and if he could have, he would have laughed.

"_Nice to see that little bastard Potters' finally begun to appreciate me, everything I've done for the little sod. Carry this for me, Granger. Now, lets' get the fuck out'r here_."

You could have knocked the night nurse over with a feather when she saw Snape walk up to the main desk.

Impatiently, he motioned for a quill, and parchment.

There was a chalkboard where the nurse's duty times were written, and the healers'.

Snape picked up the chalk, and wrote out a message, slower than usual, and in blocky capital letters, but clearly, with his right hand.

"_Leaving. Don't want dismissal potions. Will make my own_." He wrote.

"But, Headmaster Snape, your healers! They'll want to see you. This is…well, it's unprecedented! It's a miracle!" She protested.

Snape rubbed out what he had written and wrote another message.

"M_iracle that won't be in the Daily Prophet, tomorrow, if I leave now. I'll see them all in Hell, but not if they see me, first. Ta_."

Snape grabbed hold of Hermione's hand and quite abruptly, Hermione found herself outside Madame Pomfrey's Infirmary.

"That was illegal." She told him.

"_Fuck 'm! It's my fucking world, now, innit? I'm the Conquering Hero. And the Last Man Standing. I'll do whatever the fuck I like_." Snape grumbled.

Hermione knocked on the door, and Madame Pomfrey eventually opened it.

The Infirmary was less crowded than it had been the night of the Final Battle, but it was still full.

Most of the patients were students, and Snape's entrance caused quite a stir.

"It's the Headmaster!"

"He's alive! He really is!"

"Look, he's walking!"

"Three cheers for the Headmaster!"

"Hip hip…"

"HOORAY!"

"Hip hip…"

"HOORAY!"

"Hip hip…"

"HOORAY!"

Snape was somewhat taken aback by that, Hermione could tell.

He looked at Hermione, and she laughed to herself.

"Erm, the Headmaster lost his voice, temporarily. But he and I have a telepathic connection. He just said that come next year, he just bets none of you will be cheering for him." Hermione explained.

That got Snape a big laugh.

Hermione also explained to Madame Pomfrey that Snape had just walked out of St. Mungo's, refusing further treatment there.

"I'm not surprised. Why do you think I've kept so many of our wounded here to recover? If they would have let me have Glideroy Lockheart, I would have had him back to his miserable old self in six months. A year at the most. Let's get you to a bed, Severus, and I'll have a look at you."

Hermione was not surprised that Madame Pomfrey led them through the ward to a private room.

Well, a semi-private room.

She wasn't even that surprised to see who it was Snape would be sharing the room with.

Muggles didn't understand most of the magical world, but they did have a good handle on werewolves and vampires.

They had a great many superstitions on how to kill them, especially werewolves.

Silver bullets, knives or swords.

Consumed by fire.

Removal of the heart.

Decapitation.

With the exception of that nonsense about silver items, the Muggles had it right, for once.

It was extremely hard to kill a werewolf.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, before Hagrid and his burial detail had even seen to the dead, they decapitated Fenrir Greyback, cut out his heart, and then burnt the head and the heart separately from the body on three separate pyres, until there was nothing left but ashes.

Just to make sure.

Because, as any advanced student of the Dark Arts, whether a practitioner or prohibitor knew, a werewolf could seem dead, dead as the proverbial doornail, but not actually be deceased, at all.

Werewolves had amazing powers of physical regeneration; they had to, in order to survive transformation.

A werewolf who was horribly injured could lie in a state like hibernation for days, weeks, months, years, perhaps, while his ravaged body repaired itself.

And then, on the night of the full moon, when his power was at it's zenith and his body was fully repaired, he would arise, alive and well.

Even from his grave, six feet under.

That was why Fenrir Greyback was so utterly destroyed.

Snape looked at the other occupant of the room, and scowled at Madame Pomfrey.

He raised his hand, pointed at the chain coming out of the wall and blasted it to smithereens.

Them he turned and started mentally shouting at Hermione.

"Slow down, Snape! The short version is, he wants to know why you've got Remus chained up, when you know he's a Centurion in the Knights of Albion, and he has complete control over his transformations and has fully integrated his bestial self with his human self."

"He's beside himself with grief, Severus! I had no idea what he was going to do."

The huge bull werewolf sitting on the bunk snapped a wolfish grunt.

"I'm not going to run out and eat all my students, that's for damn sure. Hello, Toby. You look like shit."

It was barely recognizable, coming from a werewolf's throat, but still the voice of Remus Lupin.

Poor Remus.

It takes a lot to kill a werewolf, after all.

"He says you look like shit, too, Moony."

"You don't have to translate, Hermione. I can hear him."

"You can? How?"

"_Mind your own business, Granger. How many deaths is this, now? I've lost count."_

Remus counted on the five fingered pads of his paw.

"Let's see. The first was when I was in 3rd year. You and I made a little bit too merry over Christmas? Remember? We found that case of two hundred year old firewhiskey, and we ate about three hits of that bad acid you cooked up yourself, in your corner of old Slughorn's' lab."

Snape actually smiled.

"_I remember_."

"I fell out of Gryffindor Tower. I thought I could fly. That time was funny. The time I OD'd on, I can't recall if it was heroin, Purple Doom, or Dragon's Fire, in the prefect's bathroom, that wasn't so funny. You know I bit me tongue in half, and swallowed part of it? And your grandfather told me that since I was a werewolf, it would grow back at the next full moon, and he was right. Then, there was that Muggle werewolf I was living with, in me punk phase, when I had the six inch Liberty spikes. She slit me throat from ear to ear with the remains of the bottle of Jack Daniels that she fractured me skull with. Left the bottleneck sticking out of me neck, too. And finally, I hung meself in the Shrieking Shack three days after Sirius was convicted. So, this makes five. That was when I joined the Knights. After the 4th time."

"Not to mention I'm not sure all the students know about the Knights of Albion." Madame Pomfrey added.

"Don't know? That was third year stuff! Remus taught it to us, himself! The Knights of Albion are an ancient fraternal order of shape-shifting or hybrid beings. Animagi, were-wolves and other were-animals, both wizards and Muggles, fauns, satyrs, merpeople, centaurs, veelas, that sort of thing. They have committed themselves to working for peace and harmony between witches, wizards, Muggles and hybrid and shape-shifting beings. The highest ranking member is the Doge, then the Centurions, then the Knights, and there are thousands of members in the lowest order, the Yeomen, who have renounced their predatory or anti-human nature. They secretly work in-concert with Muggle and Wizarding society, and in the case of shape shifters, have learned to control their transformations and their behavior in their animal form, just like animagi. Their symbol is the Eye of Horus, commonly tattooed on the palm of the right hand. Everybody knows that." Hermione recited.

"_Lovely, Granger. A-plus. Go and sit down. Now, did they bury you, then, Moony_?"

"They did. I woke up six feet under. In a coffin. It took me almost the whole night of the full moon to claw my way out. "

"_That had to be hell on your nerves._"

"Me nerves? I was a poor, misbegotten emotional wreck of a boy, and I'm the same as a man. I've lived a wretched life of poverty, addiction, lycanthropy and melancholy, with occasional peeks of happiness. Only you would just call it "me nerves." Honestly? I don't know if me nerves are going to hold. I have Teddy to think of, and Harry, and me own apprentice, of course, hell, all me students, and the rebuilding of Hogwarts. But, still, it hardly seems worth it. I should have bit her. At least she'd be alive!"

"_Alive and completely psychotic, maybe! Your apprentice, the Killer Queen, she's already psychotic. You don't need two in your life, do you? Besides, you and I both know that the older you are when you become a lycanthrope, the more likely it is to turn you into a demented murderer. And you know the Knights' rules. You created her. You would have been responsible for destroying her. Besides, you left it up to Tonks. And she didn't want to be bitten. She knew the risks, either way. And she chose not to become a werewolf."_

Remus put his head in his paws.

"What are we going to do, Snape? Hogwarts is in ruins. The Whole Wizarding World is all helter skelter. Nobody knows what's going to happen next, and everyone's terrified. What in the name of the Great God Pan are we going to do?" he fairly howled.

Snape turned to Hermione.

"_We'll have to sort that out, won't we? And there's' no time like the present. Granger, go back to the house at Spinner's End. Do the marketing, and the laundry. I'll be back, soon._"

"But I can help."

"_No, you can't. Albus, rest his soul, put enough of the burden of this fucking mess on the shoulders of children. After you've finished up at Spinners' End, go home to Woolton. Take some time off. You'll have enough to do when I'm back in a few days. Leave the mug_."

As Hermione left, Snape took Lord Voldemort's skull out of the box, and, using a spell she couldn't even begin to fathom, caused a six pack of butterbeer to seemingly appear out of thin air.

He cracked one open, poured it into the mug, and drank.

"_Come on, Moony. Let's you and me have a fucking drink. This is the only thing we can drink, innit it? To the death of our enemies. May we see their survivors driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women."_

The bull werewolf rumbled a laugh, took the skull of Tom Riddle in his paw, and drank, deeply.

"I'll drink to that. Fill' er up, again, Toby." He snarled.

**Wizarding Liverpool. Late June, 1998**

**II: Snape**

Smaug's Belly was a pub in Wizarding Liverpool, located not on the well lit and wide main thoroughfare, Crooked Lane, but rather in the dark and twisted labyrinth of Wormwood Mews.

Wormwood Mews were the kind of a place that made Knockturn Alley look like a day care center.

And there was no lower, more wretched hive of scum and villainy in it, indeed, in all of northern England, than Smaug's Belly.

Snape, however, was a yob and a villain, by birth and inclination, and also a scholar, an eccentric and a mystic, which just about covered all of the Belly's regulars.

Some thought it was off that Snape should spend so much time at the Belly, considering he'd had his last drink in 1980, but considering they held WAND meetings (Wizards Against Narcotics and Drinking) in the back room, he wasn't the only one.

"Hello. My name is Snape, and I'm a fucking villain of a no-good Scouser yob."

That got a laugh.

Snape had been sober since 1980, and he really didn't need to go to WAND meetings, but he went, sometimes, anyway.

Sometimes just to see who was still sober and alive.

After the meeting, he had a game of darts with some of the lads.

On his way to the public apparition point, he went round the corner to Occam's Bookstall, and had a look around.

Once he was back on Crooked Lane, he went into Prince's Potions, and talked to his grandfather, Severus Prince, for awhile.

Them he checked the stockroom, went down to his so-called Bunker to check on his lab and his panic room, them made his way to the public apparition point, to apparate back to Spinner's End.

No one walking down the End, a working-class street in a working class neighbourhood, would have known that the man making his way down the pavement was a great man.

At least not outside the neighborhood, where it was well known that to fuck about with any one bearing the last name "Snape" was tantamount to suicide.

Indeed, perhaps, in his world, the most powerful man alive.

Barely alive.

He looked more like an ordinary hard nut of a Scouser perhaps 35, perhaps 45, typical for that neighbourhood, some kind of villain, no doubt, who had either been made to see their error of his youthful yobbo ways in prison, or from a woman, or the church.

Either that, or he had risen through the risk of men on the fiddle that he was now the one who played the tune.

Dressed in a pair of black Levi's that were about three years older than the most celebrated of his students, and a black tee shirt that had fading Motorhead tour dates from 1978 on the back, the tall, wiry , rawboned man slowly made his way to the last house on Spinner's End.

A house along the banks of the muddy Mersey, which, when at high tide, very nearly rushed right up to the rusty chain link fence around the property.

There was a moustache and goatee beard on his long face, ending in a lantern jaw and a pointed chin, and a cigarette dangled from the thin lips presided over by a great beak of a nose.

A pair of dark eyes, black as a shark's, the hypnotic eyes of a Rasputin, a Svengali, darted around at all times; the man walked warily as he made his way.

Even the heavy tattooing on his arms, and the fresh tattoo on his neck, structured around two large, deep puncture wounds made him seem quite the type for the neighbourhood.

During his long illness, he'd lost at least 20 pounds off of his thin frame, and had only gained half back, making him look like nothing but hard, flat muscle and taut sinew stretched over thick, raw bones; making his appearance seem all the more foreboding.

Scowling, he leaned heavily on a walking stick as he made his slow way up the street, dragging his left leg, slightly, holding his left arm against his side at an odd angle.

A month earlier, he had been completely paralyzed all down his left side.

The drag in his left leg and the stiff numbness in his still close to unusable left hand and arm were the remnant.

As was the fact that one of his greatest weapons had been taken from him, increasing his wariness.

There were many who feared the fists of the son as much as they had those of the father, but worse, much worse was his sharp, sardonic bray of a voice, nasal, but not shrill.

It was made all the worse for its deadly force by the thickness of his Scouse accent, and a terrible weapon it was.

His muteness was terrible loss to the man in the snakeskin boots; he walked with his knuckles white from clenching against the cane and his weak left hand balled into a fist.

Three of his knuckles were bruised, from using his clenched fist for the purpose to which it was intended.

He could have used his wand, but using his fist was more satisfying, now.

His favoured hand wasn't capable of complicated tasks, but he could still use it to fight, if he had to, not to mention the shiny metal cleats on the toes and heels of the snakeskin engineer's boots.

_Clickety-clack, clickety-clack_, as they propelled him down the block.

Still, all temporary setbacks, he was told.

The sound of some faintly ridiculous British rap group assaulted Snape as he approached his house.

He expected it to be a shit car full of teenage chavs in baseball caps and track pants, a lot of young punks looking to put one over on him while he was down.

A look down his nose told him he was right.

He gave them a sneer.

"Cat got your tongue, old man? What are yer gonna do now, yer can't say nuffin' to us, then, you fuckin' ugly old cunt!"

While the moronic passengers were still sniggering at the idiot driver's unoriginal provocations, Snape smashed the windscreen with his cane, pulled the driver over the bonnet of his shit little Japanese jam jar, picked him up by the throat in his right hand, and then threw him on the pavement.

Snape but his boot on the boy's neck and glowered at him with his best "Fifty points from Gryfinndor" stare.

The boy began to gibber and babble in terror, and another boy got out of the car and ran down the block.

He returned with a bald man sporting a handlebar moustache, a square headed fellow in a holey vest with a beer gut, but thick arms and legs as if they had been hewn from stone.

"That's my boy, Sev. He's a naff little punter, but 'e didn't mean you no 'arm."

John Frum had lived on the Spinners' End estate since he was a boy.

He worked on road crews as a laborer eight months out of a year, and spent the other four on the dole.

He had been at the local that night in '76 or '77 that half of Vauxhall saw Sev Snape beat three men twice his age and twice his size to bloody pulps.

Not an unusual occasion.

But one of them shot him in the back as he was walking out.

John would be among those who swore that Sev grinned at him, pointed his finger, muttered some foreign word and the bloke's throat tore open as if it had been cut through with a power saw.

And he believed that Sev Snape had dragged himself all the way home before passing out on his own doorstep, where his crazy family was able to put him together well enough that he was back at the local within a week.

Snape raised an eyebrow and scowled.

"You know 'ow it is when you're young and stupid? Gotter prove you're a man, yunno? Sometimes yer gets a bit too big for yer trousers, don't cher? Lemme take 'im 'ome."

Still scowling, Snape lifted his foot off of Bill Frum's neck.

John hauled his son to his feet, slapped him in the face, opened the back door of the car and shoved the boy in.

"What the fuck's the matter with you lot? Arskin' im wot's 'e gonna do if 'e can't talk? Break you in fuckin' 'alf, that's wot!"

John got in the driver's seat and drove off, laying tire all over the road.

Snape smiled to himself, and ground a few pieces of the broken glass under his feet.

_You've still got it, old man. _

Reaching the old house, Snape fumbled in his pocket as if for a ring of keys as he approached the door.

Instead he produced a wand, from inside the walking stick.

He had little need of it, at his stage of development, but he had cast the spell on the door such that it could and would only be opened by him with his wand.

He paused and looked over at Granger's Mini.

_Speaking of having it, there's a witch I'd like to give it to._

_ Who knows, it might put both of us in a better humor._

Snape had expected Granger to give up the ghost, by now, and go searching for some wizard, any wizard, who knew a way you could be released from an Unbreakable Vow.

She could have asked him.

Snape, a Pendragon, knew of two ways.

Neither were pleasant, pretty, or fun, but they existed.

And it hadn't been easy on Granger, the last month, with him being close to an invalid and her having to look after him.

But she weathered the worst of his evil moods, ad although she didn't do it quietly, she didn't show the slightest inclination to waver from her vow, to abandon him.

Snape knew he could have been a worse bastard about it.

For one thing, he'd be within his rights, not beloved, politically correct, or admirable, but within his rights to demand sex from her.

But that would be something tantamount to rape.

Nonetheless, Snape was tempted.

It was a long, hot summer, and the temporary paralysis of his third leg had lifted long before the rest of his body caught up.

The house at Spinners' End had precisely two air conditioning units, one in each bedroom, and they had been extant since the late seventies.

It was a bit of a bad business, Granger sweating in vests and shorts and him lying about in his y-fronts, which was his usual state of dress in long, hot summers when no one was about.

Temptation was right under his nose, every moment of every day, and Snape got the distinct feeling that if he wanted Granger, he wouldn't have to resort to making demands based on her Unbreakable Vow as Acolyte to her Master.

Pulling her into his lap would probably do the trick.

It seemed, however, somehow morally suspect to Snape, to take advantage of the situation they were in.

Like an abuse of a position of power.

He had decided, then, to leave it up to Granger.

And if she made advances to him, well, even if it was morally suspect and an abuse of power, he was only a man, wasn't he, and who could blame him?

He had never said he was a paragon of decency; there was only so far he was willing to go.

**II: Hermione**

Snape limped in through the front door, scowling horribly.

Hermione decided he had either lost money on darts, or someone had put him on the spot about being a hero, again.

He took off his smelly, sweat-stained tee shirt, tossed it at Hermione, picked up a teacup on the table, handed it to her, snapped his fingers and pointed at the kitchen.

She knew that was Snape's charming way of telling you his laundry needed doing and he wanted her to put the kettle on.

"Sev, be civil, you bastard, our Hermione's here to help you. No one else bloody well has been!" his mother rebuked him.

Snape scowled, kicked off his boots and tossed them aside, yanked off his socks and dropped them, then took off his jeans and flopped into the couch, in his grubby grey y-fronts.

Lately, he looked like a combination of a Scouser yobbo villain, wasted from some binge or the other, and a Wizarding Warrior from out of a book.

She supposed he actually was a little of both.

Hermione looked at him with defiance.

"Did you see what he was up to, then, our Hermione? Its' little wonder your Sibyl calls you Toby, you're that fucking villain's son as sure as if I had nothing to do with it! You're the Headmaster of the foremost school for witches and wizards in the world, a hero and a statesman, and you still have to act like a fucking yobbo Scouser, showing the neighbourhood chevs that you're still the big man? Or did you do that for Granger's benefit? Because she wasn't looking."

He picked up the piece of chalk hanging on a string from the blackboard mounted on the wall, in the boxy block lettering that was the only thing he could write with his right hand.

_"It's a good job. She'd be all over me flies."_

"Fuck off, you! If you had the last cock in Britain, I'd take a deep breath and swim to Oz." Hermione snapped.

Snape picked up the chalk again.

"_You mean Bulgaria._ _Laundry needs doing. Put the kettle on. Bye Mum. Thanks for the melodrama. Saved me watching _Eastenders_. Hop to it, Granger."_

He turned on his telly through magical means, and in the same way got a book from the bookshelf and his fags, and lit one with his wand.

"Is this what he does all day long? Make rude comments, pick fights with you and lie about in his about in his pants?" Eileen asked Hermione.

"Pretty much." Hermione answered.

She gave her son one more dirty look.

"Sev, you ought to have some shame! I know your father and I were never paragons of British decency, but you ought to 'ave enough sense not to lie about in your pants with your cricket set bulging out all ways, in front of a young girl! Your own Acolyte!"

"Maybe he's trying to seduce me." Hermione quipped.

"Well, my Toby, he never was a subtle man, either. But at least he lies about in a kilt! And a clean one at that! You're a sight, Sev. If you are trying to seduce our Hermione, I can't see her looking upon a future of you in your grubby pants and her in the kitchen banging pots and pans together as a marvelous life! And you do look almost well enough to come round to the shop. If you're well enough to loaf about at the Belly with that lot, well, the sooner you get back to work, the better. Then our Hermione can go back home, and have a rest!"

Snape reached for his chalk.

"_I'll see to me own cooking and e own laundry when I'm well. I never needed a woman to keep me and I won't start now. And when I'm at the shop, you'll be at me I'm working too hard. Da's right. There's no making you happy_."

"And you take after me for that, don't you? Remember that, Hermione. Well, I'm off."

After she left, Snape fixed his eyes on Hermione.

Snape summoned a smaller chalkboard, wrote something on it and shoved it at Hermione.

"_Kettle. Lunch. Laundrette. NOW!"_

"Oh, yes Master. Your wish is my command." Hermione replied, sarcastically.

She had to look after him, but she didn't have to suffer his bullshit kindly, so, she didn't.

Snape was, indeed, a horrible patient.

He had quite a few potions to swallow every day, and since he wasn't able to do his own compounding because he hadn't any use of his left hand and he was trying to re-learn everything with his right, Hermione usually did it for him.

Most of the time, Eileen was at the shop, so Hermione did the cooking, and generally looked after Snape, and she and Eileen shared the cleaning duties, and the chore of fending off the vultures of the tabloid press.

It angered Hermione, the way they had so hated Snape when he was at his best, and now, even though they knew he was a hero, they wanted to show this intensely private man to the world at his worst.

Eileen was never civil to them; she tore out of the house firing away with hexes and curses, shouting and cursing, and Hermione, who could also do much of her magic wordlessly, was even more ferocious, once casting _sectumsempra_ on a fellow who literally tried to get his foot in the door.

His foot stayed in the door, but the rest of him didn't come with it.

None of them ever tried that, again.

For much of the month of July, Snape spent his time either in bed with his books and parchments, listening to his records, or parked in front of the television.

Hermione was surprised they had a telly or a record player, but then again, Snape was a Half-Blood, raised in the Muggle world.

There were bookshelves in every room but the kitchen; and Hermione spent any time she had not looking after the Headmaster in devouring them.

That was not much time.

She spent much of her days in Snape's private lab, missing up his potions.

She came to dread the sound of him laboriously making his way down the stairs, the stamp of his cane followed by the heavy tramp of his feet.

If she made the tiniest of mistakes he'd pour everything down the drain, and if he was in a foul enough mood, he'd throw the errant beakers against the wall, and Hermione had to duck and cover to avoid a shower of potions and glass.

Snape hated being mute, and he hated being nigh onto helpless, and much of his communications on the chalkboards hung all over the house were hateful, profanity-laden scrawls.

He had to take it all out on someone, and she was handy, so she bore the brunt of it, but not quietly.

He scrawled and she screamed, and railed against him.

Eileen didn't suffer her son's temper willingly, either.

She and Snape had had some terrible rows.

With her shouting and him scratching out his own vitriol on the chalkboards.

She was in the lab, slaving one afternoon, when she heard Eileen screaming something very apt at her son.

"I should have named you Damien! Everyone in the neighborhood laughed when I said you were Rosemary's baby! They didn't fucking well know you had your father's black heart, black as they paint, right from the start! You're my son, and I love you, but you're the Devil's Own, Severus, and you always will be! What I was thinking when I mixed the dark wizard's blood of the Prince's with your goddamned brute of a Muggle father! It was the drink, thinking, and that's all! Now you'll fucking well act like there's some decency in you, lad, or I'll hex you into last week! I'll send your father over here, and he'll make short work of you and this shite! You mind me Sev, or I will!"

Pouring and mixing as fast as she could, Hermione hoped Eileen would do it.

Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape had a rocky marriage, to say the least.

Toby was at sea five or six months of the year, and the union had been marred by abuse on both sides before they both got sober.

Not to mention the inability of either to practice monogamy, before or after.

They had, however, never even thought of divorce.

"What, leave Toby? I can't leave Toby. I love him, don't I? I always have. Sev and I, we don't always get on, either, but he's my boy. Our boy. I don't know what makes sty in this place, where so may horrid things happened. Maybe it's Toby. For better or worse, Sev is Toby's son, make no mistake. That's Toby's face, for one thing. The lantern jaw and the long, pointy chin and that beak of a nose. Toby's hair, too. Coarse and thick. Toby's build, too. Sev's tall, and thin, like me but he's got Toby's strength. His broad shoulders and heavy bones. All sinew and muscle. Toby' so ugly, he's good-looking, like. Not to mention Toby's temper. He has the worst temper. Rages like a fire. He's a very fiery man, my Toby. As fiery as his ginger hair. That isn't always a bad thing, if you catch my meaning. We Prince's we're known for our brains, both being smart and being mad. Sev's got that on one side and Toby's fire on the other. He's not like me. He's only composed and calm on the surface. Under, it's all a tempest. Now that he's ill, and he's frightened he'll always be an invalid, he can't keep it in. He doesn't mean to be so hard with you, our Hermione. But he's a hard man who's had a hard life, he's not like to know any other way."

"I know that, Eileen. I grew up here, too. We used to get on well. There are times we still do. When he's better, things will even out. Until then. I'll give him what for as good as he gives it to me."

"I'd best give you some ammunition then. Come on. We'll have a look in me scrapbooks."

Eileen had no one to share her memories of her son with, except the press, and not only was the Headmaster a private man, his mother didn't want them bandied about like a Golden Snitch.

Hermione, however, had come into the thick of things, so Eileen was glad to share them with her.

So many pictures.

Many of Snape and his childhood best friend, Lily Evans.

Snape and his mother, at all the important occasions in his life.

Some of the pictures of him, as a boy, making that sour face with his old school trunk, they were downright funny.

It was also weird, but funny, seeing him as a teenager, scowling, in his retinue of black rock band tee shirts and Levis, or leather vests and hiar bare chest, growing in coarse black hair and tattoos as the years went on.

Snape did look a right villain, with his hair down past his shudders and a belt with a big Death's Head Buckle.

He wa soften pictured with an immaculately dressed Lucius Malfoy, in various locations, and also Sibyl Trelawney, Narcissa Black, Arabella Baxter, and, oddly enough. Remus Lipin.

Not to mention pictures of him and his father.

Snape really was the old man all over again.

In most of the pictures he was looking at the fierce Muggle Scotsman with an expression that mingled love, awe and fear.

And, speaking of Malfoy, Lucius, AKA the Prince of Darkness, who had played an integral part, at the end, in Voldemort's downfall, was a regular visitor, often with his wife and son.

Hermione was still of mixed emotions about her former mortal enemies; she kept her distance.

Once, during one of Malfoy's visits, she was nervous enough to cause an explosion in the lab, and Snape gimped down the stairs in a fury, and actually drew his wand on her.

Hermione got out her wand, and prepared to defend herself.

She would only let him go so far, and this was it.

"Alright, you bastard, if this is the way you want us to go, we'll go then, and I'll see you in Hell and I defy the Devil to keep us apart!" Hermione snarled.

Quick as a flash, Lord Malfoy was there, standing between them.

"Have you gone mad, Sev? No one's paying Granger to nurse your miserable old arse! Who do you think you are, your worthless fucking drunken Muggle father, who put most of those scars on your body? And you, Granger, it's about time for you to give up this mutual death wish. You're alive and so is Snape. That's all that matters. Who cares a monkey's how it was done?"

That seemed to chasten Snape.

He turned around and he made his way slowly back up the stairs.

Hermione started cleaning up, and Lord Malfoy insisted on helping her.

"Snape hasn't got a leg to stand on. You've no obligation, even as his Acolyte, to nurse him. Even with the Unbreakable. I was there when you took it, and at no point did you vow to put up with his churlish snarky bullshit. Not to mention he rewards you for your faith in him you by working you half to death, while you fantasize about murdering him, yourself. That is, if you don't resort to rape. Which I'm sure Sev wouldn't mind. You'd both better decide if you want to kiss or kill one another, and quit fucking about and do it."

"Well, I don't see why he'd got to be such a bastard! Eileen said they expect him to make a full recovery. Why doesn't he believe it?" she asked Lord Malfoy, as they worked.

"That's what Eileen thinks. His medi-wizards aren't sure. They said his voice will definitely come back. But he may remain partially paralyzed on his left arm and his left leg, indefinitely. They don't know. It's a miracle he's alive and walking, or that he can use anything on his left side, at all."

"We always thought that Voldemort put those scars on the Headmaster."

"Tom? He never touched Severus. Severus was his favorite. His Left-Hand Wizard. Almost like a son to him. No, that was that rat bastard father of his. And his mother. You think they're mad, now? There's a reason Tom Riddle fell for Eileen Prince. She was like a Devil in human form, when she was a drunk and a junkie. As for Toby Snape, he was less of a bastard, except when he went on one of his weeklong drunks, and then he'd turn into a real brute. Beat his wife and his son, mercilessly, and just about anyone else he could get his hands on. He spent a good bit of Severus' life at sea, or when he couldn't get a berth, in jail. Assault. Battery. Petty theft. That's the kind of man he was. Not bright enough to be a villain, he was just a fucking thug. An old pirate. The two of them have cleaned up their act, since they got sober, but if they were my parents, I would have never spoken to them, as long as I lived. Not Snape. He never wavered from them, no matter how brutal they were. And they always stood behind him, no matter how brutal he became. I suppose you've got to call that unconditional love."

When Hermione talked to Ron and Harry, she tried to explain to them about her duty to Snape.

Harry was interested; he even came to visit, since Snape returned from St. Mungo's, and looked at Eileen's album of pictures with her.

In the light of the newly-discovered letter his mother had written, Harry, tentatively, was starting to come around the house at Spinner's End.

He showed up regularly, once a week, but on different days and at all hours, in all sorts of conditions.

On one occasion he showed up drunk out of a pouring rainstorm at two in the morning.

Snape, who was still awake, let him in, and had Hermione make him something to eat.

Harry seemed to understand why Hermione was doing what she was doing.

"I'd like to stay and help Hermione, Snape. I really would. But the truth is, I'm just about as broken as you are. I was going to stay with the Weasleys, this summer, but I just can't live with their grief. I have too much of my own, you know?"

Snape got his chalk.

"_We finally have something in common, Potter. We've sacrificed everything to this war, and what have we got to show for it_?"

Harry laughed, mirthlessly.

"Not much. Look after yourself, Snape. I may need someone to look after me, one day. And there's no one else left. Who knows? You and me, we may end up having to look after each other. That's what my Mum wanted, after all."

Ron, on the other hand, had no idea why Hermione was spending her first summer of freedom tied to the ailing old Slytherin, and he was angry that he' saw her very rarely, and didn't care to hear anything about Snape.

"What about me? I lost my brother! I'm your best mate, and your boyfriend. What about me?"

"Ron, you've got your whole family. Snape has nothing. He has nothing and we owe him everything. Somebody has to pick up the cheque."

It was quite a payment to make.

For much of the month of July, Snape spent his time either in bed with his books and parchments, listening to his records, or parked in front of the television.

Hermione was surprised they had a telly or a record player, but then again, Snape was a Half-Blood, raised in the Muggle world.

There were bookshelves in every room but the kitchen; and Hermione spent any time she had not looking after the Headmaster in devouring them.

That was not much time.

She came to dread the sound of him laboriously making his way down the stairs to his lab, the stamp of his cane followed by the heavy tramp of his feet.

If she made the tiniest of mistakes he'd pour everything down the drain, and if he was in a foul enough mood, he'd throw the errant beakers against the wall, and Hermione had to duck and cover to avoid a shower of potions and glass.

Snape hated being mute, and he hated being nigh onto helpless, and much of his communications on the chalkboards hung all over the house were hateful, profanity-laden scrawls.

Hermione didn't bear it in silence.

He scrawled and she screamed, and railed against him.

Hermione knew that Snape was furious because he was so helpless, and that was why he railed at her , so.

But his meanness didn't make life any easier.

And it hurt her, deeply, more deeply than she cared to admit.

Everywhere in her life that she looked, there was Severus Snape, like a black shadow gliding out of a dark corner.

He had permeated every corner of her life, there was nowhere she could hide from the tyranny of his irrational rages, from the villainy of his meanness, from the certainty that no matter what she said or did that Snape would be all over her about it.

Like a wicked master with a wicked whip that had a wicked handle, laying both across her back in the summer heat.

Until her muscles ached down to the marrow of her bones, from which her flesh would hang in bloody strips.

Her frayed nerves were breaking; she had begun to dissolve in tears when she was out of his sight, and had come to dread every sharp word or curse than came from him as if they were blows.

Hermione would almost rather he had hit her, than to berate her, so.

And then, there was the relentless, oppressive heat.

It was a hot summer and there were only two air conditioner at Spinner's End, in the bedrooms.

They were probably as old as she was, and didn't work very well.

Hermione was always hot, always sweating and always tired, and Snape was always angry and demanding and mean.

And, of course, the frosting on the cake was the thick, viscous cloud of sexual tension that hung over them, making an unbearable situation even worse.

She often thought about what Malfoy said, about she and Snape deciding if they wanted to kiss or kill one another, and the truth was, sometimes she couldn't make up her mid.

Hermione was at the launderette, one Tuesday, glorying in the air conditioning and dreading returning to Snape's fucking sweaty hovel and his snarky villainy when she simply lost it, and started to cry.

Hermione hadn't really cried for Fred, or Tonks, or any of the dead.

She hadn't cried for the war, or for anything, really, and now it was all pouring out of her.

Which was terrible, because it was time to put the clothes in the dryer.

Hermione didn't know how long she might have stood there, by the washers, silently weeping, had Sibyl not showed up.

In the course of Snape's illness, Professor Trelawney had become Sibyl.

Her faithful attendance on Tuesdays and Thursdays improved Snape's temperament.

Sibyl was a sweet, gentle woman, and Snape was kinder to her, even when she made him do yoga and eat the vegetarian dishes she made for him.

Both of which helped his health, even he had to admit it.

Maybe it was because Sibyl had stuck by him since they were at school.

Maybe it was because she was more emotionally fragile than Hermione.

Maybe it was because he didn't want to give up a steady source of shagging he'd had since at least 1981.

Whatever it was, he wasn't half so mean to her as he was to Hermione.

Hermione had thought she could take it, but it seemed that she couldn't.

"Go and sit down, Hermione. I'll put the clothes in the dryer."

While the clothes were drying, Sibyl took her to a nice air-conditioned coffee shop, and bought her a glass of iced tea and a muffin.

"I know how you feel, Hermione. Toby's not an easy man when he's well. If he needs taking care of, he turns into a real Devil. I know. After Lily Potter threw up her hands in despair, I started looking after Toby. Him and Moony. Remus, I mean. Sirius didn't mind my looking after Remus. Poor Moony. He was so desperately unhappy for most of his life, and he was such a good man. A great wizard. A dear friend. He deserved better than he got. I've been looking after him the rest of the week. He's in such a bad way. But it's no change for me, really. They were both so fractured and so unhappy. Especially Toby. Nobody really gave a damn about Toby but me. He was awful about it, at first. He used to call me all kinds of names, and I think he suspected me of just being on the lookout for free dope and cheap thrills. But he came around. Toby's a good man. We both know that. He's just a hard, bitter man. And you fight him too much."

"I can't just let it go, can I?"

"You should. He doesn't mean it. I think I know why you two like to fight, so. You'd rather be doing something else, and fighting will do."

Hermione put her glass down.

"That's not true!"

Professor Trelawney was absently pouring sugar into her coffee.

"I suppose it's time we had a little talk. Hermione, Toby is my dear friend, possibly even my best friend. And he has been since before you were born. But we're not in love with each other. Toby lost the woman he loved when Lily Evans was murdered, and I lost the man I loved, Sirius, when he was sent to Azkaban. When he came back, we tried to patch things up, but he wasn't the same. Now he's gone. I hope he's finally at peace. I suppose what's between Toby and me is rather like what will be between you and your Quidditch hero, if your friendship endures twenty years on. I haven't given up on love. Or marriage. I can see myself falling in love with Moony. I'm already in love with little Teddy. But Toby has given up. On having any kind of life, at all. He never expected to survive this war. That's why he was pushing you away with both hands before. He didn't want you to suffer the rest of your life, like he has."

Hermione stirred her tea, compulsively.

"I would have. When I think about Snape being dead, it almost makes me ill. I was going to join the Orders. The way Queen Guinevere did when King Arthur died. No man could replace the Once and Future King. No wizard can replace the Pendragon Severus Snape."

She realized she had said too much.

"Hermione, love doesn't have to be, well, like a ball and chain. Forsaking all others so that you can sit in the kitchen with children tugging on your robe. It takes all sorts to make a world, you know. When you're young, everything seems like a huge, giant affair. Who you date. What he thinks. What everyone else thinks. None of that really matters. My point is, you are Toby's second chance at happiness. And it's blatantly obvious to me that you love him. And that he loves you. But Toby has a very low opinion of himself. He'll never say a word about it. Or lay a hand on you."

"You want me to make the first move?"

"If you want there to be a move, Hermione, you'll have to. Now, you go over to the launderette, and finish with the clothes, and I'll go and tell Toby he had better not be such a beast to you."

"Wait, Sibyl. What goes on with those two? Snape and Remus? I thought they were mortal enemies?"

"No. Snape and Sirius were mortal enemies. They had a duel once, and it was a nasty business. Wands. Blades. It came to blows, as well. They nearly murdered each other. It's hard times and bad habits between them, Toby and Moony, that's what. They were chain smokers at ten when they came to Hogwarts, and they were alcoholics at 13, and drug addicts at 14. Poor Moony is the most addicted wizard in the history of WAND. He did everything. Toby used to synthesize all sorts of drugs for Voldemort's purposes, and Remus would test them, to see if he'd got it right. Toby never charged him for anything, because he liked to have someone to get high on the hard stuff with. I'll admit to having a liking for red wine, and smoking too much weed, and doing Mandrax. And I was the poster child for free love. Sirius used to tell me that I was the Sexual Revolution all by myself. Well, I still think it's a better idea than monogamy and lies. But I never touched the hard stuff. Coke. Speed. Heroin. Purple Doom. Dragon's Fire. You'd have to be mad to mix Purple Doom with Heroin and mainline it. But they both chased the dragon. And whatever witch that would stay still long enough to let herself be caught. They're both brilliant men, but fractured. Moony moreso than Toby. Toby's a real hard case, but Moony's a gentle soul. Until he discovered the Knights, he could never come to terms with the beast in him. The werewolf, you know. And no matter what he did to himself, he just couldn't seem to die. His whole life, he never did get it together. Until he got married, Poor Moony. Don't worry about him, though. I've got five days a week to look after him. And Teddy. I've lost Sirius, and come so close to losing Moony and Toby both, I won't leave them. Either of them. And Teddy needs a Mum. Someone who loves him and supports him. Even though he's got his little problems."

"Is Teddy a werewolf?"

"Teddy, in the language of the Knights of Albion, is a hereditary Lycan. He's also a Metamorphagus, like his mother. The Transformations don't seem to bother him. You know he can change whenever he wants to? And his disposition is no different. He can join the junior Knights when he's five, so I don't expect any trouble. Neither does Moony. He wants to make sure everything's done for his son that couldn't be done for him, when he was a boy."

Hermione poured them both some more tea.

Snape was so inscrutable.

Maybe she could squeeze a few more answers out of Sibyl.

"Is there really an Order of the Satyr?"

"A what?"

"The Grand and Exalted Order of the Sorcerers and Sorceresses of the Satyr. The most powerful magical Cabal that doesn't exist. Founded by the Pendragon Severus Snape in 1975 as a kind of Hellfire Club with the informal motto" Those who live high together, die together" and the formal maxim "The Road of Excess leads to the place of wisdom." That's William Blake. But you know that. It's the only cabal of Sex Magi that requires at least Second Degree Mastery to be a member, and all its' members are Masters in the Third Degree. Remus Lupin and Lucius Malfoy are both Pendragons. And so is Narcissa Malfoy. Which means that all the surviving Pendragons in Wizarding England are in the same cabal. And Arabella Baxter was Snape's top Mata Hari during the War. Everyone knows the Witches an Wizards of the Satyr are the real power in all of Wizarding Europe. And they've all survived the War. The War that they and Albus Dumbledore strategized. But you already know that, don't you. Sibyl? Because you haven't just been hiding your beauty under all those ugly clothes. You may be, as Snape says, a little daffy, and a bit dizzy, but you and I both know you're every bit Cassandra Trelawney's heir. Don't we?"

"Do you want to be the seventh member of the Order, Hermione, and be a Colossus astride the world?" Sibyl asked.

Absently.

Hermione nodded, vigorously.

"Well, for you to do that there'd have to be such a thing as an Order of the Satyr. Which, there isn't." Professor Trelawney replied, all innocence.

"Someday…"

"Someday never comes, dear. And you can waste your whole life waiting for it. I pissed away almost twenty years, waiting for it. Think that over. Now, I'm going to go and talk to Toby. Why don't you take the afternoon off? You deserve it. Don't worry, I'll see to the laundry, too. It won't be the first time I've done Toby's washing, and I'm sure it won't be the last."

Hermione stayed at the tea shop for awhile, then made her way to Crooked Lane, and walked in and out of the shops and up and down the street, glad of the opportunity to do nothing much, for awhile.

She wandered into the Mersey & Mithril, Liverpool's answer to the Leaky Cauldron, and sat down at the bar to have a butterbeer.

There was a large poster on the wall, advertising a week of matches between the Sofia Horntails and the Liverpool Manticores.

The Horntails were Krum's team.

Looking over the poster, Hermione quickly guzzled most of the butterbeer, threw a few knuts on the counter, and made a beeline for the door.

It was Tuesday, already, and she hadn't missed a week at the Adelphi Hotel with Viktor since the summer after 4th year.

She wasn't about to start, now.

After all, even a good girl has to have some vices.

_(Author's Note: Oho, what's this? Another rooster in the henhouse? Looks like if they pass this marriage law, maybe Hermione won't end up with who you think she may. Because that's not a rooster. It's a Raging Bull.)_


	3. Raging Bull

**Chapter Three: Raging Bull**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Library, 1994**

**I: Hermione**

Hermione yawned.

She didn't want to insult Viktor, yawning, but she couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a full night's sleep.

Many things conspired to give Hermione Granger, 15, sleepless nights.

And Viktor noticed, right away.

"Are you too sleepy, Hermy-own–ninny? Or am I too stupid for you?"

"You're not stupid, Viktor. You're just not used to English. Besides, the gods only know, I haven't slept for more than three or four hours in about two years, so why do I care a monkey's, if I'm up all night helping you?"

"Hermy-own–ninny, you are too kind to Krum. To spend all this time to help with my work."

"Oh, that's alright, Viktor. It never hurts to help."

He thinks I'm kind.

_Kind._

_ He thinks I'm kind._

_ Like his dear old granny in a babushka._

_ Why don't men ever look at me and see a girl?_

"Hermy-own ninny, are you having Harry or the Veasel as your boyfriend?"

"Weasley, Viktor."

"I know his name. I am calling him vat I think he is. Veasel."

Hermione was used to that question; she hardly looked up from the parchment.

"What is it with the two of you? Why do you hate each other, so?"

Viktor shrugged.

"That's the way it is mit men, Hermy-own-inny." He said, thickly.

Then, the unthinkable.

Of all people, and at that hour of the night, Lavender Brown came from the stacks, and walked over to their table.

"Fucking slag." Hermione muttered, under her breath.

"Hermione, I was wondering if you had figured out our assignment. In potions."

If looks could kill, without a spell to make them do so, the one Hermione gave Lavender would have been as good as a Death Curse.

It was a real Snape sort of look, complete with arched eyebrow.

"You assignment? I figured out your assignment in potions when I was ten. Before I even came to Hogwarts. Those of us who know what we're doing have different assignments that you lot wot sit in the back." Hermione snarled.

"Well, could you explain it to me? You know. Just between us Gryffindors."

"Oh I would, Lav. The only thing is, you wouldn't be able to understand me. Me and my low, common, Scouser accent."

Lavender had been taunting Hermione for four years about the thickness of her Scouse accent.

Her and her upper class West End BBC newsreader spoilt posh tart tones.

Viktor swallowed a laugh.

Lavender Brown dropped the act.

"You bitch!" Lavender hissed.

"I know! Here's an idea for yer to finish yer work! Why don't you take on wiv what you're good at? Blow some bloke in 6th or 7th year, and let him sort yer out, yer fookin' slag!" Hermione shot back.

Lavender shook with rage, and then pouring on the sweetness, turned to Viktor.

"Do you think you could help me, Viktor?" she cooed.

"No. Even wizard have no cure for herpes on _khuy_."

Viktor figured that Miss Brown didn't know the translation of the word he had just used, so he helpfully grabbed his crotch to elucidate.

Then he turned his head and spat on the floor.

That was an insult in any language.

One that Lavender got.

"You thick fucking Bohunk bastard! Fuck you!" she spat.

"Fuck me? You? Don't make Krum to laugh, dirty slut you! If I had rubbermade of steel like tyre to put on my _khuy_, I would not fuck you! Krum has pride. He does not go where any dumb _muzhik_ who knows Quaffle from Bludger has been before!" Viktor yelled after her.

Hermione was quite surprised at the clarity of his English.

Give or take a few Russian words.

"That was quite good, wasn't it? Viktor, how is it you know every English phrase that's an insult, or a swear word, or has to do with sex or violence, or sport, for that matter, but you can't suss out your lessons?"

"I learn English from TV. Also from talk. And Quidditch. People and TV and Quidditch players in locked room talk from insults and cursing and violence and sex. Not what is in dusty old books."

"Locker room, Viktor. And you have a point. Look, I know that you don't give much of a damn about what's in these dusty old books, unless it's a hex, a charm, or something to do with combat or sport, and if I were you, I wouldn't either. But if you don't pass these classes you won't graduate and then they'll kick you off the team. Now, if you'll turn to page 203 in your dusty old book, here—"

"What about love? Anything in dusty old books about love?"

"Do you mean sloshy romantic shit, or fucking?"

Viktor frowned.

"You don't see might be something in between?" he asked.

"No. I mean, at least not with the fucking naff punters at this gaff."

"_Chto_?"

"Not with these immature idiots, at this school, I mean. The thing is, I would never want a boyfriend. Not by the average wizard's terms. All that sloshy love bullshit. It's all for stupid bints who end up no better off than they ought to've been. You know wot that translates into?"

"_Chto_?"

"I'll tell you wot, then! At the bottom, when they say 'I love you, I want you to be my girl', that's not what they mean. They mean, 'Because I've put me dick in you, that means you're mine. You belong to me, you're my property. You'll do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. You'll like what I say you like, and who I say you like, and you'll go where I say you go, and you had better not so much as look at another man, even if I turn out to be the worst fuck in a thousand years. And as soon as we graduate, we'll get married, and you can start pumping out my rotten little bastards, whilst I go off to work and shag whoever I please. And you'll like it.' Fuck that noise! I need that shit like I need a hole in me fucking head."

Viktor laughed a little.

"I see. Hermy-own-ninny, I do not vant to read the book you get definition of love from. Vat is it you vant from a man, then?"

Hermione had, of course, thought about that.

Many times.

But no one had ever asked her.

"Well, what I mean is, well, I'd want what men say they want from women, don't I? I'd want a man, who was a friend. Someone I could trust. Someone who wouldn't lie to me and bullshit me. And he could be a man to me and a friend to me, and that would be an end to it. A man's man, yunno. A real man. Good for it. A bloke who really, yunno, got the job done."

Hermione began to blush.

She cleared her throat and looked back at her papers.

"Christ, but I need a smoke." She muttered.

"Man who is strong man? Good fuck?"

"Summat like that, alright.' Hermione muttered into her papers and parchments.

"_Da_! I understand! How do you say, in English, friends mit benefits?" Krum replied.

"Brilliant."

She was about to look back at her papers, but, Krum lifted her head from the table, gently but firmly, putting his hand under her chin.

"Hermy-own-ninny, you are too afraid that every man is like the Veasel. Too afraid you are doomed to end up mit him. You don't know shit about men. Only frightened boys. What I mean is, voman who is, like that Lavender, who is dumb whore, don't care who puts his cock vhere as long as they buy present for her, make fuss over her, they think like all they want is fucked, mit no other emotion involved. I think Hermy-own–ninny, you have never so much as been kissed by a man, if he was to treat you like whore, fuck you and leave you and only call again next time he vants to like you say, shag, it would make you sad. Every man is not the Veasel, who wants to own, you, to crush you, to squeeze all that is good about you like orange for juice, to mash you into pulp. This you cannot learn from boy. You need man to show you. Let me." Viktor insisted.

Now it was Hermione's turn to make with the one word answers.

"What?"

"Fuck! Vere are the vords? Hermy-own-ninny, ven I am wery young, before the var kills my mother, she makes from dried English flower a scent she vears. Purple flower. Wery deliate, but wery strong. And scent is like…moment… moment of spring…"

Viktor found the word in Russian, then in Bulgarian.

But he was at sea, in English.

"Shit!" he cursed.

"Lavender?"

"Yes. You remind me of it. Like English lavender to bloom on collective farm in Bulgaria, you are rare, beautiful thing. You give all for friends, for country, for honor. Save nothing for Hermy-own-ninny. Mit kindness you treat me, like man, not like…like…"

"A commodity?"

"_Chto_?"

"A commodity, Viktor. Something that is bought and sold. Usually for a lot of fookin' money."

"_Da._ Commodity. You tell me your _deda_, your papa, he is like me. Wery big man. Ven you are home in Liverpool, he protects you. But here vere danger is, no man protect you. You have only boys, and you protect them. They do not even see you as voman. I want to be man who protects you. To hold you against my chest, to know that no one harms you."

Hermione began to feel a little light-headed.

"Fucking hell, my English is bad! Krum is not boy, he is man, _da?_ I vant to take you to Yule Ball. To be your man. The vay you say. Mit out owning you, possessing you, crushing your spirit. Wery much, I vant to kiss you, to be…I don't know vords I can say to you in library."

Krum swore under his breath and took his hand away.

"I vish you knew Russian. Or even Bulgarian, Hermy-own-ninny."

Hermione was now feeling extremely light-headed.

Does this qualify as a miracle?

Yes, it bloody well does!

"I know a little Russian, Viktor, just from talking to you. I understand. It's just that I can't fookin' well believe that you're saying what you're saying!"

"Vy?"

"I just…I mean…you don't…You don't really know me. I mean, nobody thinks of me like I'm a girl. Or a woman. Anything remotely female, at all. Maybe Professor Snape does. I can't be sure. But he's my teacher, and I work for his family and he's old enough to be my father. Well, only just. And with me being 15, I don't think much is going to come of that. Maybe not ever. My point is, I, well, I thought maybe, someday, on account of us both being from Liverpool, from the same neighborhood, you know, and his Da being friends with mine, ,maybe, someday, when I was, I don't know, thirty, or something he might notice me, if we all live that long. And Ron, well, I know he has a thing for me. But I just never thought that anybody, I mean, especially you…what I mean is, well, I know I don't 'alf fancy you, do I? I mean, I like you, don't I…as a man, and all but, well… fookin' hell, you're as good lookin' a bloke as I've ever met, ain't yer? Wot would the likes of you want with the likes of me, anyway? Yunno?" Hermione sputtered.

"Vell, you are very good voman, Hermione. Also, wery good-looking."

"Thanks. You're the first to notice. I mean, whether I am. Good-lookin', or not, that is. But, how did you know I fancied you?"

Viktor couldn't seem to help it.

He laughed, quite heartily.

"You think you do good job mit hiding it?"

"Well, I fookin' well tried, didn't I!"

"Try? You try like shit! Maybe you do not drool on table, and point vand at my head and tell me to shut up and take it like man, but you not so good to hide from me what you are vanting. That is how I get nerve to talk this vay to you."

Viktor leaned over the table so that his roughly handsome Slavic face was very close to Hermione's.

"I know vat you vant from me, Hermy-own-ninny. So much, I vant to give it to you." He told her, his voice almost a groan.

Well, Hermione Granger had only left home a few years or more, and she had never ever kissed a man before, to paraphrase Ray Davies.

A Southerner, but a good musician, nonetheless.

But she leaned forward, and put her hand on the back of Viktor's neck, and she kissed him, alright, with parted lips and two years worth of densely suppressed frustrated passion.

Victor exclaimed something loudly in the Russian that was his first language, and, impulsively, he pulled Hermione across the table and she was sitting in the other chair with him.

On his lap.

_Ooh-la-la!_

_Well, Granger?_

_ Don't just sit there like a cold fish, fucking get to it, then! _

Hermione put her arms around Viktor's neck, and wrapped her legs up around him, lacing her ankles over the back of the chair.

She was still in her knee socks, one of which had fallen down around her ankles, and her school skirt, which had bunched up around her waist, and her cotton knickers, which were becoming more disreputable by the second.

Hermione groaned into Viktor's mouth, and he growled, a rumble from deep in his brawny barrel chest, and put his hand on the side of her thigh.

For Viktor Krum, Quidditch Hero, was a big, hairy, barrel-chested bear of a man, even at 18.

Man enough to realize that had he wanted to, he could have cast a contraceptive spell on Hermione and pushed her knickers aside a bit, and she would have been unzipping his pants with both hands.

Also man enough to realize that even if he could, and she would, this was neither the time, nor the place.

Gently but firmly, Viktor pushed Hermione away.

"Enough, Hermy-own –ninny! You say yourself, the Snape, he keeps you in his pocket for later. If he catches us like this here in library, you vill be cleaning cauldrons in Potions Room until you are forty…also how long I vill rot in Azkaban. And he haunts this place like ghost. Anyvone might see us here. Funny how I have to tell you to keep it back in your pants."

Viktor chuckled a little as he placed Hermione standing up on the floor, and yanked his tunic down a little.

To obscure the obvious.

"You're right. Viktor. But, goddamn, that was one hell of a first kiss!"

"Gods, Hermy-own-ninny, I burn for you. There is…such fire when I look at you. You are, how do I say…wery much voman to me. Englishman vant the small girl, like look like little boy, but you…Hermy-own-ninny…fuck, I cannot kiss you no more in library, because ven I kiss you, I do not stop…"

Victor swore, again.

"Shit! I go too far. Please, forgive."

"Trust me, Viktor. I feel the same way. When we're alone, then, you can say them. Please."

"_Chto_?"

"The words. All the dirty words you think I don't want to hear." She panted.

Viktor blushed red to the roots of his black hair, and smiled at her.

"You vould like that?"

Hermione nodded, violently.

"_Da_, Hermy-own-ninny, I vill do vat you vant, now I am your man. Your friend mit benefits. If you vant I say to you dirty words, I say them. In Russian. And English. First I say it, then I do it!"

Viktor laughed, loudly.

Hermione felt warmth rush into her face as if she might faint.

"But this is no time. And no place. Ve must find place to go, secret place. Quiet place. Vere no one find us. And I have you to myself."

Hermione knew of one.

"Have you been to the Hog's Head, Viktor?"

"_Da_."

"Aberforth, the geezer who runs the place, he keeps a room there. Behind the goat sheds. It's not much more than a bed and a lamp and a sink , and a door with a lock on it, but you can have the room for a few knuts, and for a few more he'll forget who you are and that you were ever there. I know a secret way to get to Hogsmeade, as well."

"You are full of vonders, Hermy-own-ninny. But I do not need pass or to go in secret. I can apparatye where I want, when I want. Special pass because I play Quidditch. You go. I meet you in room. Ve vait for veek-end?"

"What, all week? Not bloody likely! I've waited long enough. Tomorrow. Eleven."

"You talk like that, Hermy-own-ninny, it makes Krum feel…"

"Weak in the knees?"

Krum laughed again, and beat his chest with both fists.

"Veak? Never! Krum is strong! Like raging bull!"

"I bleedin' well hope so, Viktor. For both our sakes, I really do."

* * *

><p>Tomorrow came a lot faster than Hermione expected it would.<p>

She went to the Hog's Head and gave Aberforth the money for the room.

He looked at her, and the money, and drew her a butterbeer.

"Not that it's any of me business, Granger, but, it's not Severus you're meeting up with, is it?"

Hermione almost choked on her drink.

"Wot? No! Of course not! He's-"

"Old enough to know better, with you being fifteen, and all. Now, let's have you wand out. Come on then, if you trust me brother, you can trust me."

Hermione took her wand out.

"Now, poke the business end into your bellybutton. No, not like that. Put it under your shirt. The spell is two words. Say "_Nolo Conceptio"._

"Aberforth!"

"Well, you parents are Muggles, what do they know? And my brother, who's stuck somewhere around 1860, doesn't have you kids taking sex ed until your 7th year. Now after you've said the words, you'll need to drink one draught of this potion. Don't give it the stink eye, it's Prince's."

"Is that a new bottle?"

"Of course it is."

Hermione did the spell, and drank one draught.

"That's a smart girl. Now, when you're 16, you can buy this in any shop you like, but before that, you can't even buy the ingredients. But, old Aberforth, he knows no one's holding their breath that long. And so does Eileen Snape. That draught and that spell will last you a week, no matter who and what you're business is with. You repeat it every week. That's three months worthy you got there. Next bottle you can buy here, no questions asked. I get it straight from Prince's Potions."

"How much?" Hermione asked.

"This time? Free with the room. Mind, it's not the nicest place, but it'll do in a pinch. Next time, luv, pick a man who's got money, and who'll take you to a nicer place. I dare say, the old Snape would."

"The man I'm expecting has lots of money."

"Do he? In that case, I imagine I'll only mark you down for having the room an hour. It'll take him less time than that to take you elsewhere."

* * *

><p>Alone in the room, Hermione tormented herself with thoughts.<p>

Madness.

It's madness, that's what it is?

What's mad about it?

Birds do it, bees do it, half the students at Hogwarts from third year on up do it.

Why not me?

Hermione was a nervous wreck.

She sat on the lumpy bed, chain-smoking.

She wore her school uniform, because it was the nicest thing she had, and when she realized she didn't have any underwear that matched or was sexy, she just wore the pair of cotton bikini knickers she liked the best and didn't bother with a bra.

It was a long time coming, she thought, because Hermione had started to get an itch for a man when she was about 12, a vague sort of itch, though.

By the time she was 13 it was more a burning than an itching, and by the time she was 14, and met Viktor, it was a five alarm inferno.

She didn't even know what it was she and Viktor really had in common.

Hermione attended school Quidditch matches because of Ron and Ginny and Harry, and she went to the Quidditch cup for an outing with her friends; she wasn't particularly interested in sports.

Quidditch, on the other hand, was Viktor's life and it was the only thing he was really knowledgeable about.

Viktor seemed surly and moody, but when you got to know him, he was really a very sweet man, and friendly, a good and decent man, but he wasn't book smart at all.

The man could hardly speak English.

Then again, he seemed to be an intelligent man, insofar as street smarts went.

He was ambitious, like she was, and career driven, and he wasn't a jealous, possessive, provincial male chauvinist pig.

Not to mention, he actually listened to what she had to say, like it was important.

Not like he was just waiting for her to shut the fuck up with her yapping, so he could talk.

Not to mention, Viktor was in awe of her because she was cute and smart, and witty and Hermione was attracted to Victor because he was a big, hairy, barrel-chested bear of a man, even at 18.

Man enough to grow a goatee, and to have five o' clock shadow at a quarter past two.

He didn't have to speak English, and Hermione didn't have to speak Bulgarian or Russian for sparks to fly between them.

She had never heard of him until the Quidditch cup, and then, when she saw him, fifty feet high on that giant screen, her belly felt like its contents had been replaced with hot molten lava.

When he showed up at Hogwarts, she got that feeling again.

There was only one other man she could think of who made her feel like that, and he was entirely off limits.

Now, Krum, he was an exotic specimen for a Scouser girl from Liverpuddle.

Tall , brawny and barrel-chested, with his high Asiatic cheekbones and his square Slavic jaw, and the thin beard, moustache and goatee that none of the boys of her immediate acquaintance could even grow.

He was very dark, his skin was a shade or two darker than her pale Northern white, and his short, thick hair was black, and his eyes very nearly so.

Viktor was a beast to most of the school, especially the Quidditch fans, moody and surly and rude, but he seemed to warm to her, instinctively.

Hermione had, like usual, put aside her own feelings to help him with his studies when he asked her to.

Never imagining that he was as attracted to her as she was to him.

She kept thinking about the pent up passion, the intense thickness of frustrated lust in his voice, in the library, and she felt so overcome with same that she felt faint.

No to mention the size of that hot, hard, insistent pole of hot meat that had pressed up against the flimsy stuff of her knickers.

Hermione frowned to herself at the lewdness of her own thoughts.

_If he starts to say filthy words to me in broken English, I'll come my lot before he even puts his hands on me._

Hermione had recently picked up a habit her parents would have hung her for.

A nervous habit.

She had started smoking, and now seemed as good a time as any.

Hermione looked around the room.

She saw what Aberforth meant.

The last time the walls had been sloppily whitewashed, Mr. Dickens was sitting down to write _Oliver Twist_, from the look of them.

They had well over a century of stains on them; yellowed from tobacco smoke, and dry rot and roof leaks.

The bed was ancient, squeaky and uncomfortable.

The rest of the room smelled of mildew and age, but the bed smelled like armpits and old beer and stale sweat and a thousand other nasty things.

She hesitated to move the covers back.

To get on the bed took a strong resolve and a strong stomach; to get under the covers would have taken strong drink, as well.

Around 10:00, Hermione heard a heavy knock.

"Who is it?"

"Krum."

Hermione lifted the wards from the door.

"Come in."

Viktor warded the door, elaborately, and looked at the room with dismay.

The first thing he noticed was the bottle on the nightstand with the label "Prince's Plan-Ahead Potion"

He took a brown paper bag out of his pocket and put it down next to the large vial.

"Now you have six month supply. I know good backup spell. Much better than shit spell they teach in sex-ed _nolo conceptio_…"

Then, he looked around the room, again.

"This is real piece of shit! I have never seen such shit in my life, and I grow up on collective farm! Live in dormitory! I have seen dirtiest locker rooms in Vizarding Vorld! This is even more shit! Is bed even comfortable?"

"No, actually. And it stinks."

"_B'lyad_! This means, in Russian, it means, fuck. And, fuck this! This is place vere old drunken man brings ancient vitch he pays cheap for. No, I do not make of you a voman in this shithole, Hermy-own –ninny. Fuck, if ve had done it ten thousand times, I vould not bring you here! Is good place from bed to get lices. Also crabs. Even if you do not, Krum has more respect than this for you. Come. We go to vere hotel team stay when play in Inverness. Is not far. And is nice place. Very old. They know me there."

"You want me to illegally apparate with you?"

"Yes. Also to lie and say you are 16."

"I can do that."

"You have vild side, Hermy-own-ninny. This I suspected. Don't vorry. I take care of everything."

* * *

><p>It certainly was good to be the king.<p>

The staff at the Royal Merlyn's Arms in Inverness treated Krum like he was a conquering hero, and when he introduced Hermione as his "sted-yee girl-friend" and explained she was "nice girl, very smart", they started treating her like she was a princess.

The suite they were given was fit for a conquering hero; the bathroom alone was the size of a parking lot and you could have sunk the goddamn Titanic in the bathtub.

"Viktor, you didn't have to go to all this trouble!"

"Yes I did. Is very important night for you. Ven you think backwards, you must remember it good. Besides, I can afford. What good money does me, not spent? None. First, is too late. Take necklace, make time go back."

"You know what this is?"

"Of course. At Durmsrtang, they teach you more of practical magic. Don't vorry. I do not tell."

Hermione turned back to 7PM.

The room seemed to go with them.

Well, it was a magical room, after all.

Carefully, Hermione took off the Time Turner and put it in the top drawer of the chest of drawers.

When she turned around, Victor was right behind her.

"Now, vere did ve leave off in library…?"

* * *

><p>"Good morning, Ron! Good morning, Harry!"<p>

"What's this? You, wide awake and chipper at breakfast? Usually your eyes are like two pissholes in the snow until our first class starts." Ron inquired.

"I got a good night's sleep last night. My first in years." Hermione told him.

"Find the cure for what ailed you, Hermione?" Harry asked.

He looked down over his glasses at her, and winked.

Conspiratorially.

Ron seemed oblivious.

"I did. Ron, would you be the best mate I ever had, and go get me another pumpkin juice?"

"Sure."

Hermione leaned across the table.

"Harry, you fookin' swine! I really thought I had all of you beat! Who was she?"

"Who was he?' Harry rejoined.

"I can't tell you that!"

Harry grinned at her.

"Then I can't tell you, either."

**Woolton, Liverpool, 1998**

Hermione was glad her parents weren't home, when she got there and began looking for the suitcase she had put the glamour on.

Sometimes she needed to use it when she was going to meet with Viktor.

She wasn't about to tell John and Olive where she was going, and if they didn't know, they would assume she was still at Snape's.

Hermione felt a pang of guilt, and deliberately squashed it down.

The wicked old screw owns me, till the day I die, I can take a fucking week off from his villainy.

Maybe it'll sweeten his attitude a bit.

Give him something to think of.

"Where the fuck is me fucking suitcase?" she snapped.

Winky, the Granger family house elf, apparated with a crack, and the suitcase.

Packed.

How Hermione Granger , head of SPEW, or her family ended up with their own house elf was quite a story, in and of itself.

But, one for another time.

"Oh, Winky, I'm sorry. I wasn't shouting at you, I was just…shouting. I just need some time off , is all."

"I have packed it, Miss Hermione. You are receiving many owls from your Crumbs. I have owled him back, saying you are going to be there, soon. How is the Snape?"

"Wicked. Evil. Miserable."

"Oh, good. He is better, then." Winky squeaked.

"Yes."

Hermione lit a cigarette and opened her bedroom window.

"Winky, my love life is so complicated."

On her way to the Adelphi, one of Liverpool's oldest and swankiest hotels, on the bus, yet Hermione thought of what she had told Winky.

It was true.

And deciding to become Ron's girlfriend was the latest disaster in the series of disasters than constituted Hermione's love life.

Viktor was not a disaster, though.

He was the only man who wasn't.

When she was 15, the towering inferno under her red and gold plaid skirt, fuelled by the one between her ears was not the only thing she and Viktor had in common.

In hindsight, Hermione realised it was a mirror miracle that she had discovered Viktor, and that he had overcome his natural shyness to speak so frankly to her.

God only knew what would have become of her, in her stupidity and lust, without Viktor.

She liked Victor, and he was honestly, a little in awe of her, and they were very good friends, but the cornerstone of their relationship was sex.

Sex, sex, sex.

It turned out to be a good cornerstone on which to base a firm friendship that had lasted three, nearly four, years now, through war and long separations.

Viktor was a little surprised that the 15 year old English rose whom he introduced to the pleasures of the flesh rapidly blossomed into the horniest hellcat at Hogwarts, but counted himself as a lucky man, and went with it.

He even had a theory.

"Everything you do, Hermy-own-ninny, is between your ears. Whole life in head, and heart is frozen. Also, everything for other peoples. Nothing for Hermy-own–ninny. Inside, you are like caged beast, roaring to be freed. With me, beast comes out. But I am man enough to handle it. What will you do when I go? I will have to some back to you, Hermy-own, ninny. Someday, maybe, I make you hot enough to melt snow on heart."

He had her there, she had to admit.

That was something else about Viktor, in his patient, understanding, nonjudgmental way, he understood her better than even her own best friends.

Everyone always wanted something from her; Viktor wanted to do something for her.

She didn't think that considering that thing was sex and companionship, without the benefit of lies, ties and slosh made the whole thing somehow inherently bad or wrong.

Viktor was an exciting lover; maybe he never read the Kama Sutra or practiced sex magic, but he knew what he was doing well enough.

He was athletic, and good-looking and enthusiastic, and he had a lot of stamina.

Like a bull.

A raging bull.

He was fond of saying that.

Viktor liked to beat his chest with his fists and yell "Krum is strong! Like raging bull!"

And it was so unlike him, she'd laugh and laugh.

He did it, probably, just to make her laugh.

Yes, those were the days.

Viktor was rude and horny and dirty and had quite a bit between his legs to back it up with.

They did the dirty deed all over the school, and the grounds, but had some of their highest times in the back room of the Hog's Head, which had a bed, a lamp, and a door with a lock on it.

The old place was a shambles, but with a little magic, a little elbow grease and a new set of bedclothes, they made it into a fine place to do their dirty work

Aberforth Dumbledore was so impressed with their efforts he let them use it, exclusively and free of charge, with no questions asked.

A further tip bought you his complete silence.

Viktor never said anything to her about love, which was good.

Hermione didn't like to hear anything about love.

It wasn't so much that she and Viktor broke up, he left Hogwarts after her 4th year, and went back to Bulgaria.

They continued to write to each other, however.

Viktor had a lot of trouble with his studies, whether they were in Russian, or English.

For starters, the Bulgarian village in which Krum had grown up in was ethnically Russian. His family were ethnic Russians who had adopted a Bulgarian surname, and Viktor had learned to speak Russian before he learned to speak Bulgarian.

Viktor had when he first went to school, painstakingly learnt Bulgarian, only to be set to Durmstrang, where the classes for all students of Eastern European and Russian origin were taught in Russian.

The official school language, however, was English, and all of the texts, even those in the Russian language, were printed using the Arabic and not the Cyrillic alphabet.

The joke in all this of course, was that Viktor was bad with languages.

He had been able to master Bulgarian because it was spoken all round him, and had some similarity to Russian, but, as Hermione could attest, his spoken English was something less than proficient.

His written English was awful, and, as for reading English, Hermione kept her letters very brief.

Worse, after Karkaroff took it on his toes and Durmstrang got a proper Headmaster, they could have conducted the classes in Wizarding Old English and it wouldn't have made a difference, Viktor would still have been at sea.

As it turned out Kakaroff was just giving Viktor his grades.

And without his diploma, he would not be able to continue to play Quidditch.

Hermione did the only decent thing.

She learnt the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet, using completely illicit and technically illegal ancient Elvish magic to enhance the speed of her learning, and began to tutor Viktor via owl post.

She began by translating his lessons into the Cyrillic alphabet, and after he gained some confidence, she started trying to make his English skills, both written and spoken, better.

It turned out Viktor was not as slow as she had thought; he was just uneducated.

Karkaroff had let him ignore his studies in favour of Quidditch.

It took him time to catch onto things, but they stayed in his mind once she managed to fasten them in there, and Viktor's grades began to improve.

Even his English writing and reading got better.

At the end of her fifth year, Viktor graduated Durmstrang, having been given a B average by Kakraroff for all of his upper-class years except the last, which he earned, himself.

Without a doubt, then, if she hadn't already, Hermione had earned herself a friend for life in Viktor Krum.

Competitive Quidditch often brought Viktor to England.

Whenever he was on the same island as Hermy-own-ninny, Viktor would move heaven and earth with his own hands to see her.

And when he was on the continent, Hermione often had to move same to see him.

Which she did, more often than you might think.

Once every two weeks or more often, once a week.

Because there were a few things she learned about Viktor in the years she had known him, and about the temperament of those hardy Slavs who had been born and raised behind the Iron Curtain.

His spoken English was never as bad as he pretended it was, and he wasn't half as stupid as he let on.

They had a name, in the Soviet Bloc nations for people who were not quick-minded, resourceful, and clever.

Dead.

Victor did have a melancholy temperament, and he was cynical, stoic and fatalistic, but, at the same time he was hopeful, even cheerful, in the face of even the worst kind of despair.

And stubborn.

Gods, was that man stubborn; once he had something in his blunt bullish skull you weren't going to shake him free of it.

That was how they had remained friends.

Even though she didn't want to, Hermione had tried, many times, to quit writing to Viktor and quite seeing him.

And he simply refused to go away.

So, she gave up.

It was certainly a sweet surrender.

**Woolton, Liverpool. July, 1995**

"Well, I think it's fucking stupid. It'd be pretty fuckin' difficult to kill Krum. Not unless you had a gun. With large caliber bullets. The Death Curse wouldn't even give him a headache. The man's like a fucking bull." Ginny Weasley snorted.

"A raging bull." Hermione corrected her.

"I'll fucking bet he is! Way-hey-hey-hey! Wink wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!"

Ginny made a series of rude gestures to accompany her comments.

"Ginny, you don't understand. You're too mercenary."

"No, I don't bleedin' understand. Mercenary or not, if I ever found a bloke I wanted to know for more than twenty minutes standing up against a brick wall, I wouldn't fucking well give him the boot because I decided he couldn't take it, being my old man , because of the war and all. I mean, fucking hell, Hermione, they're only Death Eaters! You just kill them, that's all. I've killed three of them this week, AND I dare say I've not lost any sleep over it. You're just mortifying yourself, and the gods only know why. Like you don't think you're allowed to have a man, to have anything at all. Either that or you're scared he'll get too close. Either way, it's fucking rubbish! Live a little, for fuck's sake! You could be dead before the summer's over."

The last time Hermione was at the Burrow, that was Ginny's take on her breaking it off with Viktor.

And whether Ginny was right or wrong, Viktor wasn't taking no for an answer.

He kept writing to her, and, eventually, she quit replying to his letters.

Hermione shook off her thoughts about him, and rapidly became deeply engrossed in an ancient Elvish grimoire that Snape had lent her for the summer when her father boomed to her that there was someone on the phone for her.

Hermione only had one friend who used a telephone.

"Harry, what do you want? I'm busy."

"Is not Harry, Hermy-own-ninny."

"Viktor!"

Hermione stood up, the ancient book fell off her lap and she had to use magic to catch it, before it hit the ground.

The shock of that might have disintegrated the book, whereupon Snape may have disintegrated her.

"Viktor, what are you doing on my phone?"

"In Bulgaria, all wizards have telephone. In America, in rest of Europe, shit, rest of world, vizards have phone, TV, computer. Not like you English living in dark ages."

"I told you…"

"I know vat you told me. It vas shit. I don't vant you to be noble. I just vant you."

"Viktor, I'm at my parents house…"

"Are they listening?"

"No. They would never!"

. "I think of you always. It has been three months since I make love to you last and I am like crazy man, mit out you. When I am mit other vomen, I think of you. Of how you are so much more. I miss you, Hermy-own-ninny. I miss the feel of your body squirming beneath mine, like snake. I miss the vay you used to look at me, ven you have, between your pretty pink lips, my _khuy_. I…"

Hermione's heart began to beat too fast, and she felt dizzy.

"Viktor, that's enough!"

"No! Is not! Is not enough until I have you, again! You are in my blood. Like Dragon's Fire. You must come to me, Hermy-own-ninny. And not just vonce. Or I come for you… I take you."

"Oh, gods, Viktor…" Hermione groaned.

Hermione's mother came and knocked on her door.

She dropped the phone.

"Your father and I are going to work. Are you going to the shop, today?"

"No, Mum. Today's my day off.."

"Alright, Have a good day."

After her Mum left, Hermione got back on the phone.

"Viktor? Hello? Hello?"

He wasn't there.

The next day, Hermione went to her job at Prince's Potions, and returned home to find Viktor casually sitting in her living room, discussing Quidditch with her father.

John Granger, who was already a serious football fanatic, got very heavy into Quidditch, very quickly.

"Hermione, you didn't tell your Da and I you'd been seeing anyone." Olive commented.

"I'm not! I mean. I wasn't! I mean…"

"It's alright, Hermione. You're 15, you'll be 16 in a few months. You're old enough to date. In fact, your father and I were beginning to wonder about you. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. No one."

"Mother!"

"Well, it's not normal, is it? For you not to have anyone? Why didn't you tell us? Because he's famous? Because he's a few years older? I wouldn't have much to say about that would I? Your Da, he's old enough to be my Da. You're a sensible girl, Hermione. Your father and I trust you."

"It's not that, Mother-"

"And here's our Hermione! Well? Don't just stand there in the bleedin' doorway! Viktor's come all the way from Bulgaria to see you! Is that as costly for you as it is for us Muggles?" John boomed, dragging his daughter into the living room.

"No. Vizards , ve can just apparate vere ve vant to go."

"It's not as easy as all that, Viktor! This is an illegal apparition."

"Bollocks, Hermy-own-ninny. I have pass to apparate internationally, mit out limit, because I play Quidditch."

"To Muggle neighborhoods?"

Viktor shrugged.

"Pass does not say I don't. But, if you are right, well then, I risk my freedom to come and see you. Also, I make expensive reservation for dinner at Adelphi Hotel. Maybe you go, get dressed up?"

Hermione had dinner with Viktor, in his suite at the Adelphi Hotel, one of Liverpool's oldest and finest and poshest establishments.

It was all on the arm, as Viktor was such a major celebrity in the Wizarding World, and the Adelphi, as one of the oldest hotels in England, catered to a very varied clientele.

Throughout the meal, and after, Hermione kept coming back to repeated attempts to tell Viktor that they were through.

He paid no attention.

"Goddamit, Viktor, why won't you listen to me!"

"Because you are full of shit! If I thought you did not vant me, to be your friend, or your man, I vould go. But you do still vant me, I can tell, so I vill not listen. I knew you would not come to me. So I come to you. I don't mind no strings. I don't mind no talk of love. But I have nothing to hide. No shame. I come to see your house, to meet your parents. I am proud man, I am proud to call you my friend, my voman. I vill not let you throw shame on us."

"And it doesn't matter what I want? And don't hang that dumb old-fashioned _Russki _bollocks on so thick, you clever bastard! You know they'll be on your side now, me Mum and Dad!" Hermione replied, bitterly.

"Vat kind of talk is that? Vat side?"

"What about the war, Viktor? You know how close to the action I am? Do you want to put yourself beside me in the line of fire? Because of your cock?"

"No, I vould not put myself in bulls-eye, just for my cock. You are my voman, Hermy-own-ninny. My friend. I do not stand beside you, in line of fire. I stand in front of you. Krum fights same war as you do. And I am never told okay, until war is over, you must give up friends, give up family, give up your voman, give up life and hide in hole like scared rabbit. I am not afraid of Death Eaters. I fight same war against same Death Eaters as you do. I have just as much chance to get killed knowing you as not. That is piece of shit excuse."

"Well, maybe you've got me there, Viktor, I suppose I'm just afraid you'll get too close. You, or anyone else."

Viktor laughed.

"Too close? Hermy-own-ninny, for six months, you and me, ve do it all over school, in hotels, even, almost every day! There is no more close that a man and a voman can get. I do not chase you to talk of love. Or to make claim to own you. I only vant vat ve had. Just because I go back to Bulgaria, does not men ve have to forget about it."

"Maybe I'm just not interested?"

"Really?"

Viktor stood up, and pulled off the jersey he was wearing.

Then he kicked off his trainers and pulled down his jeans.

And his shorts.

"Viktor, what the fuck are you doing?"

"This is my room. No one vill break the door down, drag me away for taking off clothes. I vant to see if you are just not interested."

He grabbed Hermione, and kissed her, holding her fast against his naked body.

"Stop!"

That was what Hermione said, but she had both her arms around him and she was rubbing up against him like a junkyard dog under a full moon on a hot night.

"Vy? You don't want me to."

"Yes I do!"

"Then let go of me. Push me away. The door is unlocked. Go on. Leave."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him.

"You son of a bitch! This isn't fair, you bastard!"

"Who says is fair?"

He grinned at her, and Hermione knew what he was going to do.

"Viktor, don't you fucking dare!"

"_Chto?_ Can't hear you. No blood in ears, all has rushed to _khuy_."

He beat his chest with his fist.

"Krum is strong! Like raging bull!"

That did it.

Hermione started wriggling out of her clothes, and Viktor helped her.

They were naked and locked together inside of a minute and Viktor picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

They spent the next few hours shagging like bunnies.

Hermione had never enjoyed being proved wrong so much.

"Ven do you have to be home?"

"Eleven. I've still got an hour."

"I vill go mit you to apparition place. Then valk you home. Ve had better get out of bed. Dress. But first, take shower."

"Right. Might as well not telegraph it to Mum and Da that you and I are sleeping together by coming home smelling like the fuck cage at the human zoo. Fucking hell, I can't believe it's been almost three months. I was going out of my mind." Hermione admitted, snuggling happily against Viktor's chest.

"It will not be so long ever again."

"No? Alright, Viktor. I assume you have a plan."

"_Da_. Once a week, you come to see me play. Different place every week, but same day. We meet in hotel. Ve haff dinner together. Ve make love."

"Can I come to your dressing room, after the game? To the showers, with you?"

Viktor laughed.

"You haff dirty fantasy about dirty screw in locker room, while I'm still mit sveat and blood from game? You are dirty girl, Hermy-own-ninny. But, no one knows that but Krum. Yes. Vatever you vant."

"I'll do it. I must be crazy, but I'll do it. Just one thing. Please, don't talk to me about love."

"_Chto_?"

"You heard me."

"Hermy-own-ninny, man who has to make talk about love knows shit about it."

**Moscow, Russian Federation, 1996**

Hermione wouldn't have termed it a "secret life".

She made no secret of the fact that she and Krum were still friends, and that they corresponded and met, regularly.

Nobody had really asked her what she meant by that.

Well, Harry had.

And she told him, because Harry had the capacity to be an adult about things.

He winked and raised his drink to his lips, and said "Here's to friendships with benefits. They're the best kind."

Other people, well, she couldn't be so sure.

Viktor was a celebrity, and she was too, in her own way; the last thing Hermione could afford to be, especially considering her position in Dumbledore's Army and the secret espionage work she did for and with Snape was to be notorious.

She kept a low profile.

Hermione had a little more leeway than the average student; as Snape's Acolyte and one of his spies, she answered to him.

He was lenient about her Friday nights with Viktor Krum.

Well Friday afternoon, Friday night and Saturday morning, and she was always back home in Liverpool on Saturday for dinner.

The Hogwarts staff thought she spent Fridays and Saturdays at home, and Hermione's parents thought she was studying on Friday nights and during the day on Saturday.

And she was always back at Hogwarts on Sunday morning, sharp at nine.

What nobody knew, except her Master, for reasons related to the War they each knew where the other was at all times, was that she spent part of every weekend in different parts of the world, with Viktor Krum.

Today, she sat in a private box at Ekateriana Stadium, named after Russia's most famous witch, the half-blood Empress Catherine the Great.

It had been built in the early days of the last Tsar, and it was a grand and ornate place, in that grand, ornate Victorian style, crossed with the usual Asiatic awesomeness of Russian architecture.

The box looked like a room from a palace in St. Petersburg, and although it was a bit draughty, Hermione was buttoned into a heavy woolen overcoat, lined in down and trimmed in fur, and had a hat and gloves on of the same material.

Prezzies from Viktor, for last year's Chrimble, to protect her from the cold winters at Hogwarts.

The weather in a drafty old castle in the Scottish Highlands, from whose highest towers you could see the North Sea were almost as brutal as those martialled up in Russia by Generals January and February.

Viktor was a major celebrity all over the world, but in the former Soviet Bloc nations, the Bulgarian of ethnic Russian descent was a demigod.

He was a real Rags to Riches story.

A poor Russian boy, born on a collective farm in Bulgaria, who lost two of his grandparents to Stalin and one to the First Wizarding War, whose mother also perished at the hands of Death Eaters. He was raised by his grandmother, a Social Democrat who spent 15 years in a Siberian gulag before being released and exiled, and then marrying a Bulgarian of Russian descent named Stanislaus Krumov.

Krum's father, who spent five years in a Siberian gulag for trying to have his mother rehabilitated and was released only to fight against Voldemort was tortured by Death Eaters and was lame in one leg and blind in one eye as a result, but survived.

Raised in grinding poverty under the Iron Curtain in the Bulgarian countryside, Viktor also witnessed the death of a younger brother and sister both from the flu, when he was just a boy.

He was the only surviving child in his generation of the Krum family.

From these dire circumstances, Viktor rose to become a Tri-Wizard Champion, graduate of Durmstrang and the best Quidditch Seeker in the world, certainly one of the best in all Wizarding history.

It was rumored that he was a part of the network of deep cover spies and wreckers that ultimately answered to double agent and sly Spymaster Severus Snape, in the war against Voldemort.

Hermione knew this to be true.

Some of their meetings had actually been covers for missions they undertook together.

Something that made Hermione comment to Viktor as though she felt she was occasionally living in some Mad Hatter's tea party version of _Dr. Zhivago_.

Viktor promptly bought the book, read it, and decided he didn't like it.

Which trumped Hermione, because she had only seen the movie.

She went and bought the book, too, and decided Viktor was not only right, but a lot smarter than she had given him credit for.

The ornate box was high above the rest of the seating and above even the Quidditch pitch, itself.

It amazed Hermione to look down and to see everyone below, from the people in the cheap seats to the would-be boyars in the levels just a bit below her.

It was an international game, with Krum's team playing Manchester, and the crowed was wholly with Krum.

So many people had come, just to see Viktor play.

So many of them woman, hoping for a night, a few hours, maybe even just ten or twenty minutes with their Quidditch superhero demigod.

And there she was, Hermione Granger, of Woolton, Liverpool.

Born in the bedroom of her parents house in Vauxhall, in 1978, delivered of dental assistant Olive Granger, 25 in the anxious presence of John Granger, 50, by Eileen Snape, the local witch/gypsy/midwife and named for Hermione Gingold, her father's favorite actress.

Sitting in a box built for murdered aristocrats, knowing that she had what it was everyone in the whole stadium wanted.

My secret life, indeed.

Hermione watched the whole game using binoculars, she was so far up.

Until the end.

Her entire field of vision was subsumed by fluttering gold and she took the binoculars away to see the golden snitch hanging before her eyes.

It buzzed and soared before her, unhindered for a few seconds.

She looked down and saw both teams far below her, but then one player began rapidly to ascend , at a 90 degree angle.

Before Hermione could even get her binoculars again, there was Viktor.

He dashed past the box and kissed her full on the lips, hovering in midair, at the same time as his hand closed around the golden snitch.

"It's good I keep my eye on you Hermy-own-ninny." He said.

Then, he turned to face his adoring fans, flying far enough away from Hermione that prying cameras did not discover her.

Viktor beat his chest with the fist that held the golden snitch.

"Krum _sil'no! Kak svirepstvovat' bull_!"

Which was, of course, Russian for "Krum is strong! Like Raging Bull!"

A little later, dressed only in the overcoat, and covered with Harry's Invisibility cloak, which he lent her every weekend, for the express purpose of sneaking about locker rooms, Hermione crept into the showers in the men's locker room of Ekaterina Stadium.

As usual, Krum had a pair of his socks hanging on the door of the stall he was in.

He admitted Hermione, and the cloak and the overcoat came off and went over the door.

In one of those secret conversations women have that men would pay to hear, Hermione tried to maintain that she was every bit the pervert Ginny Weasley was, even though Ginny's conquests were in the double, perhaps triple digits, and Hermione had only ever slept with one man.

"Viktor always waits until I show up to take a shower. I like to lick the sweat off of his hairy chest."

"Oooo, that sounds lovely. I've done that. That's why I've found, it's nice, spending a lot of time with one or two blokes. You get to, yunno, observe the niceties. He's guilty as hell over it, my lycan master, but he howls so even when it's not a full moon when I lick the sweat off his balls."

"I've got you beat. I do it on me knees. On the tile floor. Usually with one knee in the shower drain."

"Brilliant! Now that is kinky. I'll have to try that."

The hotel that Viktor was staying in used to be one of the imperial places, and the suite they stayed in had once been occupied by not only Tsars, but all the crowned heads of Europe.

Alone in such vast and ornate surroundings, the girl from a council estate in the provinces and the boy who had grown up in the dorms of a collective farm had a moment where they were somewhat less than cosmopolitan.

"I almost feel like we should sit on floor. Sleep there, too."

"Well, _tovarisch_, we've made it. This is the toppermost of the poppermost."

Victor, a Social Democrat, like his father and grandmother, smiled at Hermione's use of the word "Comrade"

A term that modern and moderate Russian Social Democrats were trying to rehabilitate.

Viktor strode forward a little, and sat in the most ornate chair in the room.

"Look at me, Hermy-own-ninny. Sitting in a chair that probably was sat in by Pyotr the Great, Tsar of all the Russias."

She took his picture.

"And think of it. I'm going to get laid by a handsome raging bull of a hot-blooded Russian hussar in a bed where Catherine the Great probably had the same."

"_Chto_?"

Hermione repeated herself in Russian, and Viktor laughed.

He got on the telephone.

One thing that Hermione thought was sensible about Russians, and, for that matter, most Europeans, as well as Americans, Australians, Canadians and Kiwis was that their witches and wizards were permitted to use Muggle devices and technology, visit Muggle doctors, even live amongst Muggles in Muggle communities if they wanted to, as long as they didn't obviously use magic.

Leave it to the British to lag behind the times, and cling to archaic traditions, as usual.

Meanwhile, as Hermione pondered politics, Viktor was on the phone, ordering up huge quantities of food.

They had a huge feast of truly grand Slavic proportions, most of which was demolished by Viktor, and then he quite literally carried her off to the huge bedroom, with its gargantuan bed.

Wherein they had the kind of noisy, smutty, sweaty, enthusiastically filthy sex that one usually associates with pornies from the seventies.

The were up half the night screwing, and talking in between, and only fell asleep a little after dawn.

They slept until noon, had another meal, followed by a quickie on the table, another shower and then, they finally dressed and parted ways.

"Where will I see you next week, Viktor?"

"Hogsmeade. I come for your Hogsmeade veekend, and ve stay in Inverness. Visit _Veasley's Vizard Veezes._ Many things I need to buy."

**Devon, England. The Burrow. Fleur & Bill's Wedding. August, 1997**

"See here, Hermione, you can't dance with Krum!"

Hermione pulled her arm out of Ron's grasp.

"Do you own me, Ron? Is your name tattooed anywhere on my body? This is a lovely wedding, but we might all be dead before those flowers on that trellis are. I may never see Viktor again. I'll do what I like, son! Today, and if it comes, tomorrow , as well.! If you've got trouble with that, we'll call this whole fookin' thing off, right now!" Hermione insisted.

"Well then, so will I!" Ron retorted.

"Brilliant! I'm glad to hear you're finally going to be a grown-up about this!" Hermione snapped.

She went off to dance with Viktor.

"Not the way you expected that would go, is it, Ron?" Harry smirked.

"Oh, piss off, Harry. Go and have another vat of wine."

"You look beautiful in that dress, Hermy-own-ninny. I will think of you in it, until we meet again."

"We won't, Viktor. I'll never survive this war."

"Don't say things like that!"

"I have to. This might be my last chance."

"Then can I talk to you now, of love?"

"A little."

"I am allowed to love you, only a little, my Hermy-own-ninny? I hope there are more years for you. That maybe Krum, or even the old Snape can burn the ice from off your heart. A witch can marry twice, you know."

"You've forgotten Ron."

"The Veasel? The only pussycat in family of lions? You forget him too, soon. I vish there vas time for me to make your forget."

"So do I, Viktor."

The song ended.

Hermione felt Ron's eyes on her.

But Viktor did not let her go yet.

"Please Hermy-own –ninny. After war is over, you must think of something that you want to do for only Hermy-own ninny, and no bodies else. Then think of next thing. Do that, too. After Voldemort is dead, your must make own life, Hermy-own-ninny. Or you will never be happy. Krum has seen almost whole family die. I know this pain. If you live, and you lose your Veasel, or Harry Potter, or the old Snape, I vill sweep up bits of you. Krum is strong. Like Raging Bull. Enough for both of us. Da?"

"Da, Viktor."

He walked with her back to Harry and Ron

"No more talk of death. Remember what they say in gulag."

Then Viktor said something in Russian that Ron couldn't understand.

Viktor wished Harry luck with great gusto, did so a little less civilly to Ron and made his exit.

"What the hell did he say?" Ron asked.

"It's Russian, Ron. People used to say it in Siberia, when they were sent there do die. You can die today. I'll die tomorrow." Harry replied.

"How did you know that?" Hermione demanded.

Harry just lifted his glass, winked, and took a drink.

**Liverpool, July 1998**

Hermione got off the bus at least four blocks from the historic, stately and ornate Adelphi hotel, and engaged her glamour.

As she walked, she thought about the last time she'd seen Viktor.

How she'd thought it would be the last time she'd see him.

That was almost a year ago.

Christ, but war's a bloody awful thing every way you can think of.

The only decent sex I had for a year was a few blows through with Harry in the fucking woods.

As if I didn't have enough to be fucking well depressed over.

No wonder Harry's been off all summer long, getting legless and screwing everything willing with a pussy and a pulse.

Hermione had only just danced with Viktor at Bill and Phlegm's wedding, although she desperately wanted to sneak away to some remote corner with him, despite alll Ron's hemming and hawing about her being almost involved with him.

And Viktor had been a perfect gentleman.

Even though he knew just what kind of whore she really was, he always treated her with respect.

Like a lady.

He made sure to tell her how beautiful she looked in her dress.

Being involved with Ron.

That was a whole different story.

Hermione was convinced that it was a combination of panic, sentiment and that old grab-somebody-it's-the-end-of-the-world feeling that made her agree to get romantic with Ron.

Ron was her best friend, since she was a little girl.

He was witty, and handsome and a safe choice, and he had the rude and horny market cornered, but was lacking in the dirty, the enthusiastic, and was rather average in dimensions.

As he was a Quidditch hero and had been with several other girls before her, Hermione expected Ron to have something to offer, but he proved to have no idea what he was doing.

Or at least, not with her.

Maybe it got creepy for him.

Sometimes Hermione, though an only child, would feel like she was having it off with her own brother, being with Ron.

Maybe he did too, and just wanted to get it over with.

Because Ron's idea or foreplay was taking off his pants and giving you a kiss.

He'd fool around with her tits a little, and feel her up, a bit, but the only part of female anatomy Ron was familiar with was the hole he was supposed to stick it in.

With these formalities completed, Ron would climb aboard, cast his contraceptive spell, stick it in, and then it was pretty much come and go.

And then he was snoring.

Hermione wasn't the kind of witch who was hard to please; it didn't take much for her to come off, but about half the time Ron didn't have that much on the ball.

Worse, although Hermione never admitted it, Ron knew he was following Viktor Krum's act, and he was apprehensive about it.

Not to mention that whether he was acting as her lover or her friend, Ron hardly ever listened to anything she had to say.

Ron never really listened to anything that anyone had to say; it was his nature.

Snape, he'd listen to everything you had to say, but he'd make snarky comments when you were done, and save some of what you told him for later so he could make more snarky comments at some other time when you wished the most that he wouldn't.

But Viktor always listened to her.

He was never mean, or rude and he never lost his temper.

After the past months, or were they the past millennia, with Snape, that was something she was really going to appreciate.

Among other things.

The old Snape, as Viktor called him, he had a thousand chances, lying about in his grubby pants, with his gargantuan cricket set bulging out in all directions, to kiss and make it up to her, for all his meanness, didn't he?

Several times in the past month, Hermione had been jostled out of a fitful sleep on a Tuesday or Thursday night, by the sounds of enthusiastic fucking going on in the old bastard's room, and Sibyl always left in the morning, smiling.

Well he was just going to have to stew in his own juices, because being a devoted Acolyte only went so far, didn't it?

And if the old bastard was insulted by it, good then.

He'd got the fucking message.

Unbreakable Vow or no, Snape didn't own Hermione Jean Granger.

No one ever had, and no one ever would, either.

**Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool**

The so-called gentlemen and ladies of the tabloid press camped around the Adelphi like flies around a fresh pile of steaming dog shit, hoping to catch war heroine Hermione Granger rushing into the arms of a man other than her reported star-crossed love, War Hero Ron Weasley.

They only beheld a tall, leggy blond witch in a Viktor Krum fan tee shirt with a starry look in her rather vacuous blue eyes entering the lobby.

She announced herself to the desk clerk as Andromeda MacAuliffe, and claimed Viktor Krum was expecting her.

Krum had left a password, and the desk clerk asked Ms. MacAuliffe.

She was not too bright, but she had the word written on her hand.

The clerk gave her the passkey and she clomped off to the lifts, in her double-decker platform shoes, dragging a wheeled suitcase with pink leopard print in faux angora behind her.

She let herself into Krum's suite, and began locking and warding the doors, casting several warding and silencing spells.

More than would be needed to get into or out of Azkaban itself.

It was only then that the witch removed the glamour, and transformed from a tall, leggy , glossy-haired blond bimbo into a rather shorter, intense, and as she saw it, curvaceous, bushy-haired brunette.

Following which, Hermione removed the glamour from her sensible black nylon wheeled suitcase.

The suite seemed empty.

"Viktor?" she called.

As if seeing him again after a year's absence wouldn't be shocking enough to her poor, frayed, tattered nerves, Viktor had to waltz out of the loo wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

Ron had once said of Krum, in his distaste, that he resembled a baptized bear.

When he was a boy of 18, Krum had been quite a man.

Now, at 21, in the full bloom of his high-cheekboned, lantern-jawed, almond-eyed Slavic manhood, Viktor bordered on the godlike.

Well, at least to her, he did.

Tall, burly and broad shouldered, with great muscular legs and arms like the limbs of a thousand-year old oak tree, and a very hairy barrel chest, combined with his rough, well-defined features, Viktor Krum was just about everything a little Scouser bird the likes of Hermione could ever wish a man to be.

Spending a furious, tedious and celibate summer with Snape, while the latter lounged infuriatingly about in his y-fronts as he rapidly returned to the wiry, sinewy and ugly bloom of Scouser villain manhood had taken more of a toll on Hermione than she realized, and just knowing that Krum was hers for the taking made her feel dizzy with blunt animal lust.

But, even so, she had little desire to visibly pant and drool like some idiot lovesick fangirl at Viktor's mere presence; she wanted at least to seem cool, calm and collected.

If for no other reason then to assure him that she had come to see him for more than just sex.

Viktor was less concerned about how things seemed.

"Hermy-own-ninny! You are finally come!" he exclaimed, and before she could so much as take another breath, Viktor had lifted her off the ground and he was fairly crushing her against his chest.

"I vas so vorried that I vould never see you alive, again! And ven you did not come yesterday, I vas next to myself! " He told her.

"Beside yourself, Viktor."

"Vatever. Now you are beside me. That is all I vant."

Viktor only put her down so that he could free his hands to roam desperately and demandingly over her body as he covered her face in kisses.

"Hermy-own-ninny, my Ekaterina, I vill take you like _Russki_ hussar takes his enemy in battle and his Tsarina in bed. I fuck you like Superman. _Da_?"

So much for cool, calm, or collected.

Hermione whipped the towel off from around his waist.

"_Da_, Viktor. _Da_!" she groaned.

They made short work of Hermione's clothes, and Viktor picked her up and carried her to the bedroom of the suite.

He put her down on the bed.

"You haff become more beautiful in a year, Hermy-own ninny. Your body, it blooms like flower. Now, your breast so big, they flow over from my hands. You make Krum so hard, I could use my _khuy_ for Beater's bat."

And he said it so ardently, with such depth of feeling.

As he wagged his big, thick, stiff cock at her, and laughed.

"It wasn't the war that almost killed me, Viktor. It was going a whole year without a proper fuck from you."

He laid her down on the bed and got into it with her.

Sighing, Hermione reached for the nearest approaching part of Viktor Krum.

"The gods only know the only thing that got me through all those bloody months in that fucking tent was daydreaming about your cock." She admitted.

"Yes? Was rest of me in dream, too?"

"Of course. Especially your mouth. And your hands."

Krum laughed.

"I wonder if any other man knows how dirty of a girl you are, Hermy-own–ninny."

Briefly, Hermione thought back to a night at the campsite.

"_Owww! Quit slapping me, Hermione! That fucking hurts!"_

_ "You drunken bastard! You poncy naff Southern berk! If you're too drunk to get it up for me, I'll break more than your glasses! _Sectumsempra_, trousers!"_

_ Rrrrrrrip!_

_ "See that, luv? I'm never that drunk. The ol' Firebolt's never failed me yet. All aboard!"_

_ "How about I get a moustache ride, first, Harry? Magic aside, it's not going to lick itself."_

_ "Gods, Hermione, you're so dirty. If I would have known you were this dirty, I would have fucked you, years ago."_

_ "Shut up, and do it now."_

"Not like you do, Viktor."

"No, no, don't smoke that shit. I buy you cigarettes in Turkey. Best in vorld."

"Viktor, you don't have to buy me presents."

"Yes, I do. So, how is Head of Master Snape? You write me that you take care of him."

"Headmaster, Viktor. He's made an astounding recovery."

"_Chto_?'

Hermione smiled to himself.

The first word of Viktor's language she learned, other than the ones he panted over her in the dark was that one.

"What?"

"He's loads better. Almost back to his miserable old self."

"He is good to you?"

"Snape? He's a snarky, miserable prick. Mean as a rattlesnake puffed up with cobra venom. But that's the kind of man he is. What a man's meant to be, where we come from. I need a vacation from the manky old git, and he needs one from me, I dare say. He is good to me, though. In a very important way. He treats me like…like I have value as an...intelligent person. I'm his Acoylte and he's a Pendragon, for fuck's sake. He and his Mum and his grandfather are all both impressed with my abilities. Now he's a hero, he's going to make it public I'm his Acolyte and a master of some of the Disciplines, in my own right. Snape's grooming me to be his apprentice and making me a recommendation to the Merlyn School for university. He trusted me to look after him all summer. Snape's good to me, in his way. When he's better, thinsgw ill go back to normal, between us. I mean, he takes me seriously. He's the only one who does."

"This is good. You are smartest, you should be best. Rise to top. What use is it to be good at something and get nothing from it?"

Hermione sat up in bed, taking a long drag on the aromatic Turkish cigarette.

"I'm glad you understand that, Viktor. Well, of course you do. You're one of the best Quidditch players in the world. You understand what it is, to work, to strive for success. To want to be someone in the world. To have something. A name. A position. Money."

"Yes. Specially money. Without money, life is pile of shit. Without success, where does money come from? Not piece of shit collective farm in piece of shit village in country where we lived worse than fucking _muzhiks _a thousand years ago. Now, that I am big Quidditch hero, what family Wizarding War and Muggle Communists leave Krum with, they live well. I live well. Big house in Sofia. Also big house in St. Petersburg, where my family comes from. Best neighborhoods. Houses just for me, too. Everything I want all around me, I can walk to. Nothing I don't. I might get place in England, you know. In London, I think. I grow up in country. Is nothing. Is bollocks. You don't want to move to country, Hermy-own-ninny. Is pretty to visit. Is shit to live. Nothing to do."

"Tell that to Ron."

Viktor scowled.

"I do not talk to the Veasel. I give him punch in head."

"Viktor!"

"Vell, I refuse to pretend I like your Vesael friend. I meet his father, his mother, his brothers. Even his sister is better man than he is. Killer Queen is twice man he is. Two weeks ago, we play London team. Is Ginny's second game only playing pro. Killer Queen she take two Bludgers to head at once, boom-boom! Does not stop her. She go into right angle dive, mit great roar like beast, blood coming out of ear, rips through defense like men bigger than Krum made of, how you say, ass papers, you know?"

"Toilet paper?"

"Vet toilet papers. Blood fly this vay, teeth go that vay. Hers, theirs, every vich place. She is so close I feel breath on my neck. We both touch vings of golden snitch at same time. First tie Quidditch game in fifty years. Next time ve meet, I must train like for Triwazard Tournament for month, or Killer Queen vill kick my ass. After game, she come to men's locker room, tells me I am great man and wants to go drink mit me. I drink, she drink butterbeers. Ve get in large fight, beat up every asshole in bar. She walk back to hotel, apologize that she don't go to bed with me, but that with you and her bring such good friends, it seem wrong to her. Woman is lion, not like lion. Rest of family, even her mother, like family of lions. Her mother who bake cookies and knit pullovers, she kills Bella Lestrange. The Veasel is runt of litter. Disgrace to his family. You and Harry Potter carry him around like excess luggage."

"Baggage."

"Vatever. He is small man, can only be big standing on shoulders of big man, or by making big man smaller. This is what he vants, Hermy-own –ninny, to make you small. Vants you big in club, make cake for him while he go play second violin to Harry Potter. You, mit no socks on. Baby hanging from each tit, kids tugging on hem on robe. Every year and half, breed you like cow until tits droop to knees. And you end up, like in Muggle movie you take Victor to? Where the Kazakh man say his fat _babushka_ wife have _manda_ like sleeve on wizard. That is if skinny little shit like the Vesael can get dick like pencil in before dribble all down your leg. When Krum is 15, Krum was man. When Harry Potter was 13, he was man. The Veasel is little boy at 18. He make good girlfriend for you to giggle mit, but any fool can see he's not man enough for you."

Clearly, Viktor held Ron in as great disgust as Ron held Viktor.

But, Viktor had a point.

"That is what he wants, in a nutshell. And we're a disaster as a couple. Every time he tells me he loves me my insides turn to ice water."

"And he is no good in bed?"

"Well, not to me. I roomed with that fucking whore Lavender Brown, and he put her over the moon. Puts me to sleep. We're just no good together. Can you keep a secret, Viktor?"

"I keep all your secrets, Hermy-own–ninny."  
>"I did a terrible thing. Horrible, really. With Harry. It was a rotten thing for us to do. For me to do. But I did it, you know. And not just the one time. And in the woods yet. Like a couple of beasts. The idea that death was right around the corner, it made Harry and I so desperate. All it did was make Ron want to go to sleep. I should feel horrible. But I don't."<p>

Viktor shrugged, with typical Slavic fatalism.

"Is war, Hermy-own-ninny. War to end world as we know it. Many people feel same way. Go crazy. Drink, eat, fuck, do anything. Get in for last chance. It just prove what I say. Veasel is boy, not man. Harry Potter is man. It drive him crazy to know his good friend, sexy young woman, she is frightened, waiting for death alone and unprotected, between cold sheets. Is only natural for him, as man, to want to be mit you. So that you and he do not die alone. I vish I could have been mit you. Ven I hear you are captured and tortured, I vow that I kill Lestarnge voman mit bare hands. No magic. Mrs. Veasely take care of that for me, but I find vere she is buried I go piss on grave!"

Hermione laughed.

"I think the whole Weasley family would go in with you for that one. Viktor, you make what I did sound so noble." Hermione snorted.

"Is noble. You are hard woman to know, Hermy-own-ninny. You kick people away with both legs while reaching for them mit both arms. Sometimes all you want from man is for him to be man to you. Vesael can be friend to you. But not man."

"Don't say that, Viktor! I've always valued you as my friend. You listen to me. Nobody listens to me. I don't want you to feel like I'm just using you for sex. You really are you know, a mate. As much as Harry or Ron are. But…I'm fucking terrible with this kind of bollocks. You know what I mean, don't you?"

"I know."

Viktor yawned.

"Too much fucking, too much talk. I have to sleep for a time. When I wake up I go downstairs for food. Yes?"

Hermione was feeling a little sleepy, herself, and she allowed Viktor to gather her into his arms.

"Brilliant, Viktor." She yawned.

And slowly, she began to drift off to sleep.

Viktor nudged her.

"Hermy-own-ninny? You are awake?"

"I am now. What is it?"

"I keep think of what you say. About fucking in woods like beast. Where is nearest woods, so we can go make fuck like beast? I am like Beater's bat again."

Hermione grinned into the dark.

"What about if we illegally apparate to the Forbidden Forest, shag like satyrs, and then we come back here and order room service?" she asked.

"You are vicked, Hermy-on-ninny. But is good idea."

**Smaug's Belly. Wizarding Liverpool**

**II: Snape**

"_You see that, Luke_?" Snape snarled, over the din of the regulars watching the fourth of five Liverpool v. Sofia games.

It was an odd conversation, considering that Snape's entire part of it took place through telepathy in the mind of his friend, Lord Lucius Malfoy.

But, then again, Malfoy thought, it was better that not even the regulars at the Belly, who were well used to Snape at his best and his worst, be subject to the malevolence of the conversation he and Sev were about to have.

It might erase what little goodwill his wartime efforts had engendered in anyone.

Even his fellow Scousers.

"I see it. But I don't believe it."

"_That Russki son-of-a-bitch! And that fucking naff little berk Granger's in that audience, somewhere. Egging him on. How d'you fucking like it? She makes an Unbreakable Vow to me, spends the whole summer nursemaiding me, and as soon as Krum crooks his little finger at her, it's fuck you, Snape. I'm off._"

Lord Malfoy snorted, derisively, into his fine imported butterbeer.

"You can't have it both ways, Sev. If the witch isn't getting what she wants out of you, she's going to go get it, elsewhere. If you don't want her chasing after Krum, you'd best give her something to keep her at home. You fucked up, already."

"_Did I? How was that_?"

"Well, when Little Miss Ginny Weasley, the Killer Queen, was 15 and she came panting after me, with the intent to have her wicked way with me before she tore me to pieces, I made sure I showed her what I had over all those naff punters she fucked up against Aberforth's goat sheds, didn't I? By the time I was done with her, she didn't want to kill me, anymore. And after that, she stopped screwing everything in pants, and murdering Death Eaters and so on. I took her in hand, didn't I? You, you let Granger run wild all over the place. You're lucky she was a sensible girl, and all she did was shag Viktor Krum. Krum's been standing in your shoes for years, hasn't he? You should have been the first, Sev. That girl's been flinging herself at you since she was 15. And you did the decent thing and looked away. Fat lot of good that's done you. You ought to just give it to her. Show her what she's been panting after, all these years."

"_How old were you when the Killer Queen was 15 and you started shagging her? 45_?"

"Something like that. But, as I said, I saved my little Poppy, didn't I? Besides, I imagine I was the last man in the Wizarding World she hadn't got around to. But that never bothered me. I like a woman who's wholly and entirely corrupt."

"_Well, Granger is! Whether she's shagged half the world or not; I can tell she's a filthy little thing. I'd give it to her, alright! That fucking little Griffindor whore; she's fucking well never had it like I'd give it to her! She's mine, anyway, isn't she_?"

"She certainly is. By Unbreakable Vow.""

"_I fucking own her! Body and soul. She'd not soon forget me!_"

Snape slugged down the remains of his tonic water and lime, and pounded on the bar for another.

"_Little bitch! Teasing me all these years. Torturing me. Then she runs off with that blunt-skulled yob of a Quidditch player? Without so much as a note? That's it Luke! The fucking living end!_"

"As well it should be! Some women, yunno, there's nothing they understand but fucking. You can buy them gifts, you can be sweet to them, you can be an evil bastard to them, and no matter what you do, they take no notice of you. It's fuck you, what have you done for me, lately? But, give a witch like that one good fuck, and she'll always return for another. Mind, those are the best kind of women you can find." Malfoy replied.

Snape was getting angrier by the moment, working himself into a jealous, wrathful frenzy of lust and rage.

"_You know wot? You're right! She's 18 years old, isn't she? Nearly 19? I'm not going to piss around with all this bullshit about power and honor, and propriety and decency. If all the little plastic Scouser cunt wants is a good fuck, then, by all the gods I'll give her one! I'll fix her! I'll fucking ruin the evil little whore so that every time she opens those pretty round white thighs for any other man, all she'll be able to think of is how he isn't me! I'm through mollycoddling her_!"

"That's what she wants, isn't it? She's one of you Scousers, she grew up round the fucking block from you, didn't she? I was at Hogwarts, Tuesday last, and I had a whole earful of weeping and sobbing out of poor old Moony, about how he was so worried about our Miss Weasley, about how she's gotten angry with Potter and out of spite to him she's gone back to running all over town with everything in pants that's a fan of hers. How Remus tried to tell her to leave it out and she told him if he wanted to tell her what to do when she wasn't with him then he could find some other woman to take up his time when Sibyl's with you. Which was less than kind, considering the shape Moony's in, and less than respectful considering she's his Acolyte in the Brotherhood , but Poppy, she's always been less than kind. And one thing the Killer Quuen doesn't respect is mealymouthed pieties. You know what I did?"

"_What_?"

"Well, I went to the Horntail's Nest, in Knockturn Alley, and I kicked in the door of the flop room she was in, and I pulled some little bastard off of her, and knocked about four of his teeth down his throat with me walking stick. Then I dragged her out of bed, pushed her into the shower, cleaned her up, pulled her out of it, wrapped her in me cloak, carried her out of there, took her back to Malfoy Manor, and then to bed. And I shagged the arse off of her. And yunno what?"

"_What_?"

"She turns to me and she says, 'Fucking hell, Luke, Harry broke some bloke's jaw at the dive next door to the Nest the other night. Dragged me back to Grimmauld Place and we made it up. What took you so fucking long? I was beginning to think you didn't like me, anymore.' It's a game, Snape. The game that bad women love to play with men who are worse than they are. You can't let a boy like Krum beat you at it."

"_No, Luke. I fucking well can't. Can I_?"

Snape finished his tonic water and lime.

"_You wait. When she comes back on Monday, is Granger ever going to get it from me! Whether she likes it or not_!"

"Oh, she'll like it."

"_You fucking bet she will_!"

Snape scowled at the screen playing the Quidditch match, and mentally shooting a "Sectumsempra" at it, caused it to break into about a million tiny pieces.

He pounded on the bar for another tonic water and lime.

"What? It's not legal, anyway, is it? And I don't suppose any of you would like a duel over it. Or maybe just anold-fashioned punch up? Well?" Malfoy protested in his behalf.

Snape stood up, with his wand in his left hand and his right hand in a fist.

He made eye contact with every wizard in the room who was giving him a dirty look.

Each and every one backed down.

The barman brought him anotherd rink, and Snape sat back down, in front of it.

Snape grinned, nastily, into his tonic water and lime.

It was about fucking time for him to take matters into his own hands.


	4. Magnificent Obsession

**Chapter Four: Magnificent Obsession**

_(Author's note: Wow! Is this dirty!;_) )

**Penny Lane, Liverpool. Office of John Granger, D.D.S and Olive Granger, D.D.S, 1988**

**I: Snape**

"Go on, Hermione. Show Mr. Snape what you showed me."

The little girl with the buck teeth and bushy brown hair regarded Snape with wide and surprisingly intelligent eyes.

"It's you." She said.

"It is? Who am I, then?" Snape replied.

"You're the Snape. Who lives on Spinner's End. Everybody in Vauxhall knows you. So I'm not sure if I should show you what I can do."

"Why not?' Snape asked

It was obvious the child was bright; he wasn't going to talk to her like she was an idiot.

"Because it's, well, it's magic. Like Gandalf. And things."

"Gandalf?"

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"How old is she?"

"Six. But she reads at an 7th grade level. We can't get books out of her hands, Sev. She's a smart little thing, my Hermione."

"Then you had better show me. Your magic."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a wizard."

The little girl frowned.

"You? You don't look nothin' like a wizard. Not like Merlyn. Or Gandalf. Bullshit." She replied.

"Hermione!" her father exclaimed.

"It's alright, John. If my mother wasn't a witch, I never would have believed in magic. Would you like to see a little Elvish fire?"

"Like the stuff around Frodo's sword?" Hermione asked.

Snape nodded.

"Would that convince you I was a wizard?"

"Maybe."

Snape opened the palm of his hand, and said a word in Old Elvish, s few words, and a small blue flame danced in his palm.

"Convinced?"

"Sort of. Let's see you do a spell."

Snape didn't figure as how anything simple would convince this child, so he turned her father's desk chair into a rather small gryphon, and then back again.

"Are manticores real?" the little girl asked.

"Yes."

"Am I likely to run into one?"

"No."

"That's a good job. Alright. I'll show yer."

The little girl, Hermione, carefully laid three marbles on the floor.

She said a spell, something she'd got out of one of the Rings books, slightly fictionalized accounts of Wizarding history, and the three marbles flew into the air.

The girl knew the whole spell, she made them do all sorts of calisthenics and then fly back into her pocket.

"So she's a witch, then?" John Granger asked his patient.

"Definitely. Don't do any magic in front of anyone, girl."

"I don't. Do you think I'm stupid? They'd burn me or kill me Mum and Da or send me to the nut house, or summat." Hermione retorted.

"Yes. They would."

"Da says your're a teacher. Do you teach witches and wizards?"

"I do. At a school for people who can do magic. Wizards, like me. Witches. Like you."

"School? A new school? Where I can learn new things? Things other people don't know?"

"A whole world of it."

"Will you teach me, Mr. Snape?"

"Yes."

"When do I get to go to the wizard school?"

"When you're ten."

"Will I be just like you when I grow up?"

"Why would you want to be?' Snape snorted.

Hermione looked at him like he was mad.

"Because you're the Snape. You know everything, and nobody fucks about with you."

"Hermione! No swearing!"

"Sorry, Da." Hermione apologized.

Snape smiled, just a little.

"You may very well be just like me when you grow up, girl."

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, January 1997**

"Everything's so horrible, Snape! I'm so bloody terrified. I just don't feel safe anywhere. Not with Harry. Not with Viktor. Not in Griffindor Tower. Not at Hogwarts. Not at home. Only when I'm here, in this bloody dungeon with the likes of you! I can't take the pressure. I can't live with myself. I try to think like Ginny, that they're only Death Eaters. But I keep seeing their faces. Their dead faces! I'm fookin' well cracking up, Snape! I am!"

Severus Snape had known Hermione Granger since she was 8, been her teacher since she was 10, her employer at Prince's Potions since she was 14, and she had been his Acolyte and he had been her Master Magus in Four of the Five Disciplines, one of which, Magick of the Spheres, or Alchemy, as Muggles called it she was a master in the First Degree of, herself, for two years, since she was 15.

He had sent her on missions too terrible to ask any witch or wizard to undertake and they had worked magic that had it been known that such things still existed, they would have been illegal.

And he had never seen her shed a tear.

Until now.

She sat on his worn old couch in front of the telly he wasn't allowed to have in the main room of his dungeon living quarters, crying her eyes out.

"Have you got a fag? I'm all out."

Normally Snape wouldn't lend her a cigarette, but he made an exception.

She lit it with her wand and smoked and cried until it burnt down to her fingers and she dropped the butt on the stone floor, grinding it under one of her shoes.

She spoke again, looking at her shoes.

"Something horrible is going to happen, isn't it? You're going to do something awful, and I'm just going to have to believe that you've done it for the right reasons."

"Can you do that, Granger?"

"Of course I can, Snape! I trust you, no matter what. What scares me is you'll have to go off somewhere. And then I'll be afraid all the time."

She jumped up off the couch, and grabbed him, as close to his shoulders as she could reach, considering he was about a foot taller than her.

"What if you never come back, Snape? What if you die? What the fuck will become of me, then? You've got to do it!"

' "Do what?"

"Make me your Acolyte in the 5th Discipline."

The Fifth Discipline, which no with or wizard could study in less they were an Acolyte of two disciplines and a Master of one, was the most arcane, dangerous, but yet ancient and powerful of all the Five.

Magick of Eros and Love.

Or as the Muggles called it, Sex Magick.

Snape was a Master in the 3rd degree, like all the other Disciplines.

He was one of only a handful of Wizards or Witches in the world who had conquered that feat.

A Pendragon.

"I'm 17. I'm old enough."

"You don't know what you're asking me, girl."

"Yes I do! I'm not some fookin' child, am I? I'm your Acolyte. You're my master. I'm James Bond to your M. My father's friends with your father. We're both from the same city, the same neighborhood, I grew up one street away from Spinners' End. We can't get any closer, can we?"

"Yes we can."

"Well, don't you want to?"

"Of course I want to! I'm old, not dead."

"You're not that old. My Da's 25 years older than me Mum. You're only 18 years older than me. I didn't say I wanted to marry you, Snape."

"If I married you, the bond wouldn't be as strong!"

"Well, then, why don't you promise me we'll do it after the war. Yunno. When we're the both of us dead!"

"What do you want with me, Granger? What do you see in me?"

"Everything a man's cracked up to be, that's wot! Give me something, Snape. Something to hold onto, if I make it and you don't. Or, the other way around. We've got six months until the end of the school year. That's less than most people get, but more than some. I'm not asking you this just because I fancy you. If you die, I need to finish your work. Your legacy. To become a Pendragon. For both of us."

"Is that all there is in it for you, Granger? Your own greater glory?"

"Fuck no. I might as well come out with it. I'm not asking you to forsake all others. I'm not talking about love. That's all bullshite for fucking idiots. I don't just want you, Snape. I need you. Like I need air and food and water. I'm dying by fractions of inches, without you. Do you want me to defile myself? Get on me fucking knees and beg you?"

Granger was angry, now, she was shouting, but her face was still stained with her tears.

"Are you that kind of a girl, Granger?"

"You bet I am!"

"Lift up your skirt."

And she did it, just like that.

All she had on under it, besides her knee socks, one of which was pulled up and one of which was around her ankles, as usual, was a pair of red cotton knickers with the Gryffindor Lion on them.

Snape felt a twinge in his balls that was just diabolical.

He touched her round, full white thigh, almost at the very top.

Her breath became shallow.

He pressed his hand against it, a little harder.

"Great God Pan, I, your beloved son, son of your blood, Severus Tobias Snape, through my grandfather, Severus Prince and through his father, the satyr, Vernus, Master in the highest degree of your Magickal Art, the Magick of the Wild and the Wood, the Magick of Evolution, Generation, of Creation, itself, call upon you now, by virtue of my blood, your blood. To my service witness this vow of my four times Acolyte, that Hermione Jean Granger, is bound to me as I am to you, by my blood, by your blood. Five times bound in unbreakable vow. Master to Acolyte, wizard to witch, man to woman. Upon her body I place my mark."

Hermione felt a tingling sensation on her leg.

"Hermione Granger, do you swear before the Great God Pan, whose blood flows in your Master's veins, that you bind yourself to me, as my Acolyte, five times bound by Unbreakable Vows?"

"I do. I will not desert you. I will not betray you. I will be your Acolyte all the days of my life. In death I will mourn you. In blood avenge you. From now until the undead end of time. As one Pendragon to another."

"Then I do swear, and bind myself to you. I will not desert you. I will not betray you. I will be your Master all the days of my life. In death I will mourn you. In blood avenge you. From now until the undead end of time. As one Pendragon to another."

Snape removed his hand from her thigh, flopped down on his couch, and lit a fag.

"There. It's done."

Hermione sat down beside him, and looked at her thigh.

There was a Goblin-style tattoo on it, of a merry, dancing satyr, playing his pipes.

"How did you do that, Snape?"

"Magic."

"I know that, you toe-rag! Well? Was that it, then?"

"That was it."

"You mean there's no actual sex involved?" Hermione snorted.

"Well, if you were a virgin, and I had to teach you how to fuck, that would have been part of the ritual. But seeing as how you and Viktor Krum having been shagging all over Europe and the Americas, not to mention bits of Australia, as well, for the past two years, that bit wasn't necessary."

"You're a real snarky fookin' berk, you know that, right?"

"You've read every book you can get your filthy little hands on about Sex Magick, Granger. You know it's not as abrupt as all that. Before you get any practical training from me, you and I are going to have to acquire deep and intimate knowledge of each other's bodies. Most of the time, a witch and a wizard or two witches or two wizards and a witch, or what have you, will have been lovers for two or three years before they take a step like this. But, considering you're such a hot little Gryffindor slut, I imagine we can do a year or two's worth of filthy, dirty fucking in three to six months. But, right now, we don't even have that. I'm afraid you'll have to wait till after the war. Now, if I don't make it, my mark on you gives you the privilege to have one of the other two masters of the Order of the Satyr take over in my place. Lucius Malfoy's a shrewd, devious man, moreso than me, even. And Remus Lupin is a werewolf. Even if he seems dead, he won't be. It's bloody hard to kill a werewolf. If our side wins, you can pick either. If Tom Riddle's side wins, align yourself with Malfoy. He'll never stop working to see Tom dead, and I imagine if I'm dead as well, you'll feel the same way."

Snape finished his smoke, and got up.

"Now, go and wash your face, and get it together. We've work to do, tonight."

"Wait a fookin' minute? Where o you get off, calling me a slut. On second thoughts, I'll bet that's just where you get off, isn't it? Well, you've got me right, you old bastard! That's what I am, and make no mistake about it! And someday, someday, when you fucking well least expect it, I'm going to get tired of you and your snarky comments and your pitiful excuse for a personality, and by the gods, by the Great God pan, himself, I'll show you, oh I'll bloody show you just what I am! And you won't be able to get out of your bed for a week!" Hermione shouted.

"Finished?' Snape asked.

"Yes."

"Good. Like I said, we've work to do, tonight."

**Spinners' End, Vauxhall, Liverpool. 1998**

**I: Snape**

The fury that Snape had flown into on Saturday at Smaug's Belly hadn't abated on Sunday, rather, he had grown angrier with every passing hour.

Not to mention that before, Snape had just been angry because it still bothered him, the things he couldn't quite do, and he was taking it out on Granger because she was around and he knew she could stand it.

Now?

He was ten times more furious with her than he was at his illness.

It wasn't so much that it bothered him that she was fucking Krum; he didn't consider the boy a credible threat.

What pissed Snape off to no end was the way Granger had just gone off with her Quidditch Hero without so much as leaving him a note.

And if Granger thought he'd been a bastard before, she hadn't fucking well seen anything, yet.

It was three in the morning and Snape was still awake, sitting at his kitchen table in the dark, chain smoking, thinking dark, evil thoughts, screwing up his anger into a massive fist of rage that he would pummel his Acolyte with when she walked through the back door, come the morning.

Snape knew Granger well enough to know she'd sneak in through the back door, fearing his wrath.

That was when the door of one of the cabinets began to rattle and he could hear the dishes inside, rattling and shaking.

It was the fourth of fifth time, but this time, it sounded like the dishes would begin to break.

"Will you fucking stop that! I'll give you to Luke if you don't leave me the bloody hell alone!"

"Severus, you are going to bring me out of this cabinet and let me have my say, or I will break every dish in here! And you can't give me to Luke, I'm a magickal gift, aren't I?

That comment came from the pewter and silver-plated d hollowed out skull with the right hand from the same skeleton fashioned into a mug that was sitting in the cabinet, outfitted with a black, silver and green Prince's Burning Ever After Candle in the hollow.

Tom Riddle was of course, dead, his body and bones but for the hand and skull consumed by magical fire, his soul split by the horrible Rite of Demonic Execution carried out on him by Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy while Snape was in the hospital after Nagini's attack.

The demonic part of him, which was about 80 percent had been destroyed.

Surprisingly, there was enough of a homeless remnant of what was yet decent and good in Tom Riddle's half-blood human soul to retain his consciousness.

It wasn't even enough to be a proper ghost, however, and after quite some time trying to find a place for itself, what remained of Master Riddle settled in what was left of him, the mug that belonged to his heir.

Snape had made the mug a candleholder and quit drinking from it after he realized it was possessed after Tom began to complain about the cheapness of the tea that he drank, and the ignominy of having to live in a cabinet with a lot of chipped and cracked beakers, most of which Snape had got for free from petrol stations and the like, over the years.

Tom was forever trying to convince his former Acolytes Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy and Snape, and even his old friend Severus' Prince and the woman he almost married, Eileen Snape that he was a changed wizard, and if only they would complete the Rite, and provide the good, decent and human remnant of him with a body to live in, well, he would make amends.

If he didn't, according to the Rite, even if he so much as lifted one finger in anger at any other witch or Wizard, his new body would dissolve into dust, and the remnant of his soul be dammed for all time.

Still, no one was yet convinced.

"_Fine! It's fucking dark in here, anyway. At least you'll be useful._"

Snape stalked over to the cabinet, got the skull mug out, banged him down onto the table and lit the candle.

"That's better."

"_I don't want a great fat lot of your shitty fucking advice, Tom_!"

"Do you know why your mother left me, Severus?"

"_Because you were an insane fucking lunatic who wanted to make some half-arsed attempt to destroy the very fabric of the universe, because it wasn't enough for you to be the son of Satan himself?"_

"I'll admit to that, yes. But it's also because I was a rotten bastard to her. I took it for granted that she was my Acolyte, she was bound to me, and that she was engaged to be my wife, that she was in love with me, and pregnant with our child and only 15. Eileen was the sheltered daughter of a pureblood family, who didn't know a telephone from a tractor. And she ran away to the Muggle world, and married your great, drunken brutal oaf of a useless pirate of a father. And they provided you with the sordid provincial inner city childhood from Hell."

"_So Da got handsy when he was drunk, and Mum was a terror when she was strung out? We all sorted ourselves out. You've no room to talk about my father, with as much blood as you have on your hands! Do you have a point, Tom, or are you just going to ramble all night_?"

"Of course I have a point! Hermione is a grown woman of 19, and a war veteran who took and passed her NEWT's from a tent, via owl-post and still made the highest grades of any student in her year. She's brilliant. Not to mention she spent considerable time in her summers off from Hogwarts obtaining a proper Muggle education through online courses. Thanks to you making her James Bond to your M, she' s an expert in world travel, dirty tricks, double-crosses and not being found when she doesn't want to be. Her O-levels and A-levels are some of the highest in Great Britain. She has her pick of Wizarding universities, and I'm sure she could persuade Remus Lupin, you fellow Pendragon and colleague, to perform the Rites of Severance, and take over as her Master. And she's a half-blood, she could chuck the whole thing, go to Cambridge or Oxford and become just about anything she wanted. Or anyone she wanted. Granger has also refused to recognize the existence of romantic love, you've never touched her and that lad Krum certainly has. Not to mention she's famous , now, she could have her pick of men, couldn't she? Hermione's far better situated to leave your mean, ugly, ungrateful arse flat, and don't forget, she's your little Frankenstein , Severus,. If you made her angry enough, she could turn her back on you and either never feel a thing, or never permit herself to. I lost the woman I loved because I was an arrogant, conceited, rotten bastard, and that's; why I'm in this spot. If I'd had a wife and a son to think of, maybe I would have thought better of some of my madder ideas. You've got the world, my boy. And you can have the girl, too. Why throw anything away, when you've got it all? Especially out of sheer stupidity and meanness?"

Snape thought about it.

"_You've got a point, Tom. I never even considered her leaving me. She's a real Scouser, though, tough as leather and hard as nails. If I pushed her too far, she might do it. And with what she knows , I might even have trouble finding her, again. But I can't just let her fuck over me and get away with it, can I?_"

"Certainly not! Frankly, my boy, I am shocked that young Mistress Granger would behave this way towards you. Going off with some blunt-skulled Bohunk without so much as having the decency to leave you a note! I know you don't expect, or promise fidelity, but out of common decency and respect for you as her master, and as a man, she could have at least sent you an owl.." Tom sniffed.

"_Suggestions, Tom_?"

"Don't get mad, Sev. Get even. Instead of screaming and yelling at her, explain to your Acolyte what a shocking breach of protocol, and of her duty it was to abscond without speaking to you. And then you can tell her how very much you were personally hurt, angered, and disappointed by her actions. Then you can yell a little."

Snape thought about it.

"_I like that idea. And I'll sit here for the rest of the night, that way when she sneaks in , early in the morning…_"

"…you can really put the screws to her. Literally. You've got to get in the game, Severus. I would, if I were you. I mean, what did you put that tattoo on her for? Show? She thinks that Krum boy is really something. You had better show her he's not a patch on your arse."

Tom chuckled.

"She'll thank you for it, in the end."

* * *

><p>Hermione's eyes widened into two huge saucers when she crept in the back door at dawn and found Snape at the kitchen table, a full ashtray at one hand and his grisly candelabra at the other.<p>

"_Well, look who's here! Master Riddle and I have been waiting up for you. All night_."

"Did you have a nice vacation, Miss Granger? Master Snape was very worried about you. And I was very worried about Master Snape. All alone, with no one to help him, for a week." the skull asked.

Hermione looked at her feet.

"Oh."

"_Oh? You up and desert me, a sick man, without so much as a note, to go and live it up at the bloody Adelphi, in the bloody lap of luxury, with Viktor bloody Krum, and all you have to say is "oh?" Well, I'm sorry, Granger. That's not what you might call sufficient. I'm your Master, Granger. You swore an Unbreakable Vow to me. At the very least, it was a breach of what you might call protocol for you to take it on your toes, the way you did? Well?_"

Snape could see his and Tom's plan was working.

Hermione had come in, spoiling for a fight, but now that Snape had begun with a formal reproach, the wind was somewhat knocked out of her sails.

"I…I…erm…"

"_Really? Bloody fookin' fascinatin', Granger.! Now, as I was saying, I may not be at death's door, and I may be well enough to gimp around, but I'm not what you'd call a well man, am I? I still can't fucking speak, or even make any kind of sound I can use to communicate with anyone but you, Luke Malfoy, and what's left of Tom, here. I'm hardly adept enough with me right hand to get at the pots and the stove; if I try it one-handed, and not even me preferred hand, I might either burn meself or break things. Nor is owl post very fookin' useful when it's Tuesday night and you've had nothing to eat all day and you're all alone when you're dragging your leg about and your smart hand doesn't work! Floo's right out, too, seeing as how I can't talk! I didn't want to bother Mum at the shop, the rush is on for the new school year. So I had to apparate to Hogwarts, and ask poor Moony, who can hardly shift for himself, in his grief, not to mention his mountains of work, if I could borrow Sibyl till you saw fit to come back. And she missed out on the whole week of work she has to do at Hogwarts, having to look after me. It was frustrating for both of us, as I can't speak, but it's a good job Sibyl and I know each other so well, and I know I can always count on her, when I need her. I thought I could count on you , as well, Granger. I can see I was wrong."_

"Snape, believe me, I mean, Christ, I mean, Merlyn's balls, I didn't…I didn't…"

"_No. You didn't, did you? Your mate Krum did, though. I received an Express Owl from the Adelphi Hotel, from him, on Wednesday, first thing, telling me that you would be at the Adelphi Hotel, until Sunday, if I needed to reach you for any reason. I hardly know the boy, I taught him in one class, for one year, and he's got more regard for me than you have. Not to mention the way you've insulted me as a man!"_

"What do you mean, as a man?" Hermione asked.

_"Don't play dumb with me, Granger. Any bint what loves cock as much as you do knows exactly what a man is, don't she? Tom, I'm going to take you out on the porch. This is between me and Granger_."

"I understand, Severus."

Snape took the skull out onto the front porch and set Tom on the table by his lawn chair.

"Sev, you really do feel terrible about this, don't you?"

"_I do, Tom. I'm in love with the wretched little bitch, aren't I? Or something very like it. Something not so rosy and nice as love, but, well, I'm in a spot, I am!"_

Snape really hadn't meant for that to slip out, but it was the truth, and he had to tell it to someone.

"Don't look so shocked, boy. I'm sure you think you're being wild about your Acolyte is a big secret no one knows, but, at least to me, and probably everyone else who knows you, it's rather obvious."

"_Not to Granger_."

"She's only 19. And so far you've showed her your love by spurning her, putting her off, and being the worst kind of horrible bastard to her. What did you expect?"

"_You just get your fresh air. And don't talk to anyone_."

Hermione was still standing in the doorway when Snape came back.

"_You know, Granger, at me best, I'm a mean, ugly, bad-tempered old bastard, aged beyond his years, facing down forty with a lot of responsibility and a lot of bad road behind, and not much to show for it. Now? I'm a mean, ugly, bad-tempered old bastard, aged beyond his years, facing down forty with a bum leg and a bad arm, and I can't even speak. Maybe it was fucking vanity, but it was a stupid kind of comfort to me, that I had a pretty, intelligent young girl for my Acolyte who admired and respected me, and didn't half fancy me. Who carries on her pretty, round white thigh my mark, as her Master of the Fifth Discipline. I was rather looking forward to making good on that mark. I'm so terribly fucking sorry I couldn't get around to your initiation, or to some more informal shagging, but you're not the only witch in my life, and I haven't been up to me usual self, lately, have I? Also I'd like to apologize for being a little testy with you, but I'm having a bit of a hard time. The responsibility for the entire British Wizarding fucking world's been dumped on me shoulders, and for a few months there, it looked like I might be a pathetic, mute, impotent cripple for the rest of my natural life!"_

Snape began to allow himself to be angry.

"Snape, I…I didn't think."

_ "Didn't you? D'you know how it makes me feel, not as your teacher, or your master, but as a man, that the first chance you had, you ran off with a handsome, famous lad half my age and left me here to twist in the wind, like a pathetic old cripple? The only fidelity I ever expect of any woman is that she treats me with respect, treats me like I'm a man, with common fucking decency. And you couldn't even manage that, you dirty, faithless little whore?"_

"I'm sorry, Snape. I didn't meabn to. I mean, I..I didn't intend…"

"_Are you? Really? You're sorry? Do you think that fookin' counts for anythin'? I've been fair with you, Granger. More than bloody fair. I knew you were a fookin' slut like every other Griffindor on God's Green Earth, and you would have spread your legs for me when you were 15 years old, and I could have ripped urf yer knickers an screwed you with me boots on, standing up, in the stockroom at Prince's Potions, come in your face and wiped me cock on your trousers and you would have fookin' well thanked me for it. Hell, Potter, your own best friend knew you were a fuckin' scrubber, didn't he? He pushed your face in a pile of wet leaves and told you to get your big Scouser arse high in the air for him, and you were glad to do it for him, and get on your knees in the snow and suck his cock for him whenever he liked! That Weasley idiot's the closet thing you have to a brother and you let him fuck you. And I heard right from Malfoy, himself, that it wasn't just poor old Dobby, rest his little soul, he was kin to my house elf, Treacher, who saved you from Bella Lestrange._"

"Lord Malfoy removed me from harm's way, allowing Ron and Harry to escape, at great personal risk. He could have exposed himself as a double agent, and then Voldemort would have killed him. I felt as though I had to express my gratitude towards him in a very real and personal way. " Hermione sniffed.

Snape rolled his eyes.

"_For fuck's sake Granger, who do you think you're fucking talking to! Tom wouldn't have killed Luke for all the tea in fucking China. I was his heir, but Luke was his favorite. The old perv never did get over Luke deciding his teenage experimentation was over and he didn't fancy blokes, leaving him, and taking Cissy with him. Till his last day he hoped he'd manage to get Malfoy in the sack, again. Tom wouldn't have harmed a bloody hair on Luke's head, especially not over a cloth-eared bint the likes of you!" Tom took a shot at killing me, but not Luke._"

"You don't know that for sure." Hermione protested

"_Yes I do! And you could have just said thank you very much and told him you owed him one. You've got balls, though, Granger. I'll give you that. There you were, in the jaws of the enemy, having just been tortured by the wickedest bitch in all of Britain. For once in his life, I don't believe Luke had any ulterior motive in washing you up and healing up your bruise and scratches other than looking after you. But right there at the intersection of power-mad and cock struck, which you are, is Luke Malfoy, being the Prince of Fucking Darkness, and the heir to Elrond and the Kings of Numenor, not to mention a 3__rd__ degree Sex Magus and the kind of bloke witches like you go absolutely mad for. I was a fool to be the only man who ever took a second look at you and treat you like anything with respect, or decency. Sorry, are you? If you're so sorry, lock the door, get your kit off, and get down on your knees and suck my dick! If you do a good job of it, maybe I'll forgive you_." Snape sneered.

Now Hermione got mad.

"You can't talk to me like that, you filthy, evil, murdering Death Eater bastard! You're worse than Voldemort, himself! You stepped over his bones like he was nothing to you, didn't you, you Judas? A man who was your Master, who loved you like you was his own son, who came this fookin' close to bein' your father, an' you fucked him over just like he was nobody. And Albus, too! Struck him down like he was a mad dog in the road! You rolled right over the bones of your Masters, two old men who thought the world of you enough to die so that you could live to inherit it from them! An' you don't care a monkey's for it! Not to mention you're a nice one to go on about my being a slut, or a whore! You'll fuck anything that isn't student over the age of consent with a pussy and a pulse, and you'll be goddamn grateful for it! Learn yoga, you skinny cunt, and suck your own dick! Fuck you!" Hermione howled.

Snape jumped to his feet, faster than she thought he could.

"_Come here!"_

"No!"

"_Then I'll fookin' well make you_!"

Snape grabbed Hermione, dragged her over to the table, sat back down and pulled her into his lap.

He kissed her, with as much contempt and violence as he might have hit her.

She pulled away from him.

"Don't touch me! I hate you!"

Then, Granger threw both of her arms around his neck, and kissed him, violently.

His long fingered hand snaked around her body and over her breast, and she pressed her body against his, squirming against him.

He could feel her heart fluttering and hammering in her chest.

Without a doubt, his logical Lolita was hot for him.

Suddenly disgusted, Snape shoved her off his lap and onto the floor.

"_I had you right, didn't I? Get out of my sight. Go do the washing up, or something. Fix lunch. I don't know. You know, Luke and Tom both, they told me if I want to keep your attention I had better fuck you into it, which I very well could. But, just now, I don't want to. Which is odd, considering the way I've lusted after you, for years. I imagine I'll get over it, this feeling of disgust and disappointment, these spasms of morality don't last in me, very long. Or maybe I won't. But right now, feeling as I do? You couldn't pay me to touch you. I'm tired. I'm going to bed._"

Snape wasn't lying, he really did feel awful.

Hermione followed him, this time.

"Snape, wait. Please. Listen. I didn't mean to hurt you. But you've been just brutal to me, these past few months. Absolutely brutal. There were times when I was actually terrified of you, not even in a magical sense, I was physically afraid of you, that you'd fucking well beat me, senseless. I wish you had hit me. I've been to war, I can take a punch. A punch would have hurt me a lot less than all your screaming at me over every little thing and being so damn mean to me. You don't know how I feel about you Snape, because I'd die before I told you, and I know I'm an awful slag, but when it comes to men, to sex, you know. I just can't seem to help meself. I just had to get away. I had to."

_"I don't mind your going. It's the way you went. Maybe, you'd better tell me, Granger_."

"Tell you what?'

"_Just how you feel about me."_

"I can't. It's got nothing to with love, or any of that. It's terrible."

"Tell me, anyway."

Hermione sighed.

"You're my Magnificent Obsession. The dark, malefic sexy beast, the monster of power who lurks in the shadows of what I'm sometimes sure is my hellbound heart. They say when you have deep feelings for someone it saves you. Not the feelings I have for you, Snape. They'll damn me, straight to Hell, and no bones about it. You see, I think, well, take Sibyl, for example. She cares for you in spite of what you are. Sge sees some prince in you who isn't there. No pun intended. Not me. I want you because of what you are. The Dark Spectre who haunts Hogwarts Castle, the infamous Sorcerer of Spinner's End whose very name struck fear and trembling into the heart of every boy and man on the estate. I mean, everyone who's ever met you is terrified of you, because you're such a mean, evil, brutal bastard. Bikies, chevs, skinheads, witches, wizards, Death Eaters, hard nuts of all sorts and shapes and kinds, they all know you and they all fear you. Your students most of all. They don't just fear you, they're so fucking terrified by the very thoughts of you that most of them fear you more than the Devil in Hell and Lord Voldemort, put together. And they're more in awe of him than any other wizard they could think of, living or dead. On both sides. Your Masters were the most brilliant White and Black Magicians of their age. You're probably the most terrifyingly powerful wizard who's ever lived, in addition to being the kind of villain you are. I may be in awe of you, but as your student, and your Acolyte, for your intelligence, and knowledge, for the depth of your magical skill, your power, the gravity of your grasp, not just of magick, but of the mysteries of the ways and means of the entire fookin' universe, itself. During the war, you barked and bit. I was the most trusted lieutenant in your army of spies and wreckers, and I came to admire your cunning, your grasp of strategy, your sense of history, and your strength, both mental and physical. I would have gone with you, no matter what side you were on. Not to mention, how I feel about you, as a woman. I really am the worst kind of slag, Snape, and I'm not ashamed of it even if I am a whore, or a slut, because I want you. And it's because you're mean and scarred and ugly and hairy and heavily tattooed and brutal. You're like some dark satyr who inhabits my most visceral fantasies of heavy, unrestrained lust. You're absolutely right about me. I'd crawl across hot coals and kneel in broken glass for the pleasure of sucking your dick. The only reason I didn't strip off and throw meself down on the linoleum is because I have these vestiges of pride. I am cock-struck and power-mad. I'm dazzled by your intellect, I'm enslaved by the idea that you can impart your forbidden knowledge to me, and I'm absolutely possessed by my lust for you. It's horrible. It's torture, every moment of my life."

Hermione felt quite drained, after she blurted out her confession.

Snape just looked at her for a moment, and then he grinned.

"_You really, really, really should have been in Slytherin. I suppose I should come clean with you, as well. Do you know how often it is, what the odds in the universe are, of a man like me, having a girl like you madly lusting after him? To the point of utter derangement? A billion to one. No, a hundred billion, to one_. Granger, you are also my magnificent obsession. You have been since you stated rubbing your luscious, rounded, hot little body against me when you were a little scrap of Scouser jailbait 15 years old. You don't know how hard it's been for me not to use the power at my disposal to murder Viktor Krum, with my bare hands, and get away with it, simply because he's had you. I'm greedy for you. You're my Acolyte, you're mine. You belong to me. Other men can fuck you, but none of them can have you, possess you. Not the way I do. Operating under thatrationale, I've done some horrible things."

Snape grinned, evilly.

"Horrible things?"

"_Oh yes. Horrible. I've coveted you, and drooled over you, and wished all manners of horrible deaths on every man I've ever even suspected of touching you. I know what every single pair of knickers you possess looks like, because you've inadvertently showed them to me. If you ever noticed you're missing some, it's because you are. I've stolen a pair r two that I particularly liked_."

"Really? Because Every month I steal a pair of your shorts from the Hogwarts laundry. I…I keep them in a plastic bag between me mattress and me box spring. And then at the end of the month, I switch them with another pair." Hermione blurted out.

"_I've watched you get undressed_."

"I've spied on you while you were taking a bath."

Snape laughed.

"You're a filthy little girl, aren't you, Granger?"

Hermione nodded.

"And you're a dirty old man!" she replied.

"D'you know wot, Granger? There's no war bringing impending death on one of us, no rules about you being under the age of majority, you've graduated, you're not my student, anymore. There's nothing to stop me, is there?"

"I certainly fucking won't!"

Snape picked Hermione up and lifted her onto the kitchen table.

He pulled her hard against his body, so that he could feel her nipples scraping against his bare chest through her thin shirt, and she could feel his cock insistently pressing against her belly.

She moaned a little, and squirmed against him.

"_Now I have you, here, in my house, with all the doors locked. There's nothing and no one to stop me from stripping your arse naked and doing what I like with you. You're mine. All mine. All is forgiven. Granger. We understand each other, now. Gods, I've never wanted to fuck a woman so much in all my life! My Hermione, my Acolyte, you depraved, filthy little creature, let me fuck you and fondle you and utterly violate you in the most bestial fashion imaginable_! _Ooo, am I going to show you just what the bond between us is made of. "_

He crushed her body against his and kissed her, furiously, ravenously, making a fist in her thick, curly, brown hair.

He knew he must have been pulling it a little but Hermione didn't care.

She kissed him, violently, squirming in his lap.

He devoured her mouth with deep kisses, stealing her breath away.

"…Snape…oooo, you bastard, you ugly, magnificent bastard, had you snuffed it I would have spent a year in mourning just for your cock! You had me right, you had me right all along! And had better fuck me like you mean it, or I swear, by the Great God Pan , I'll kill you while you're sleeping…" she gasped.

He seized her glassy, lust-filled eyes in his.

"_You won't have the fucking strength, witch. Get your kit off. Now_."

He unzipped his flies, and yanked down the waistband of his y-fronts.

Without anything like shame, Hermione undressed, fast as she could, and Snape stepped between her open legs, surrounded by her waiting arms.

She put one leg up around his waist, and he held it there, with his bad arm, and braced his good arm against the table.

"_My Lolita, my sweet, dirty, beautiful, brilliant Lolita. I could fuck you a thousand times in a day and not have me fill of you. My own lovely, filthy little whore_…"

Dirty talk absolutely deranged Hermione, and Snape was a silver-tongued Devil, indeed.

She groaned, helplessly.

"Toby…more, Toby, more…"

Sibyl Trelawney had taken to calling him Toby, like his father before him, because Snape hated his first name.

Hermione had just picked it up.

She couldn't fathom calling him "Severus" and it didn't seem right, calling him "Snape" if he was going to screw her into the tabletop.

"_Are you that kind of hot little slut, it's not enough for a bloke to do you dirty, he has to talk that way to you, as well?" _Snape purred in her ear, nipping softly at her earlobe.

"Yes_…_oh, yes…" Hermione moaned.

"_I'll bet you are. I'll bet you'd love to drown me in your dirty, wet cunt. Maybe I'll get down on my knees on the linoleum, and devour your hot little pussy? I'll bet you'd love that."_

_ She moaned all the louder, abandoning herself to the fury of their mutual lust._

_ "Or maybe I'll just shove your lovely, big, round white thighs open as far as they can go and drive me big, stiff cock into you? Is that what you want, my Lolita? For me to fuck you like the cock hungry little teenage whore you are?" _

"YES!" Hermione howled, with joyous abandon.

He had his strong, long fingered hand between her legs, stroking, teasing, caressing, thrusting.

"_You little devil, I'll bet you never got this wet for those boys you've fucked. Well you're going to have a man, now, aren't you? Be a good girl, and spread your legs for Daddy. No, wider._"

Hermione was almost ashamed at the way she couldn't get her legs apart fast enough.

Almost.

Snape pressed the hand that wasn't between her legs against her belly and muttered something in Elvish, and Hermione felt a jolt like he'd thrust his cock into her and hit just the right spot.

"What the fuck was that?"

"_A contraceptive spell_."

Hermione was completely naked, and not only was the wicked old screw fully dressed, he still had his boots on.

He had his very talented, very dirty mouth all over her neck, and her ears and then her tits, teasing her nipples with his tongue and making Hermione erupt in moans, squeals and reams of shocking profanity.

It would not seem as if a man could masterfully fuck you, on a table, but the fulfillment of the very dirtiest fantasy had Hermione halfway to coming her brains out before the old Snape ever thrust that monster of his up her.

"Don't tease me anymore you bastard, I can't stand it. I want your cock, gods, I need it!' Hermione panted.

"_All of it_?" Snap mentally purred.

Hermione moaned by way of answering.

She was so ready for him that she nearly began to weep and sob with slippery liquid lust as he made good on his promise to drive his cock into her.

It was huge, immense, a magnificent weapon; she could only hope that he knew how to use it.

The old Snape, he surely did.

He rocked his hips around this and that way, and slid her a little closer to the edge of the table, then changed the intensity of his thrusts.

Hermione wasn't sure for what reason until the pleasure he was giving her mounted to a sharp crescendo, and she screamed and almost bit her tongue in half.

He'd found the spot.

Ron didn't know there was one, Viktor managed to hit it a few times, at least once a month, and Harry flat out asked her how she liked it and what way so he could get to it, but Snape just hit the fucking spot, right from go, and then, he kept hitting it.

Again, and again and again.

Harder and faster and deeper.

Hermione's legs began to quiver as she locked them around Snape; if he had let her go she would have collapsed on the floor.

She broke into a sweat and started tossing her head about, and bucking her hips against Snape; with all her might, with all her strength.

A weaker man would have buckled under the fruruous onslaught of Hermiones' furious lust, unleashed, but not Snape.

Oh no, not Snape.

The table itself began rocking and Snape tightened his hold on her.

"_Good girl_." Snape growled at her.

"Don't stop!" Hermione fairly sobbed.

"_I won't. Even if you beg me to_."

He smacked her on the ass.

"_You take my cock like a shameless fucking whore, d'you know that? You live to fuck, don't you, you little slut?_"

"Yes!" Hermione cried.

Snape smacked her on the ass, again.

"_Say it louder. Scream for me_!"

Not hard, she wouldn't have liked that.

Just a little smack.

"YES! OH, YES, FUCK, YES!"

Snape laughed.

Evilly.

"_Liitle Griffindor slut! But you, my Lolita, you've got just about the hottest, sweetest little teenage pussy I've ever fucked. Gods, I'm going to come in you so fucking hard, I might fucking well pass out. But first, you're going to come for me. Come for me, Granger. Harder than you've ever come before. Just for dirty, greasy, ugly old Snape. Give me all of your sweet little cunt._"

Hermione suddenly knew why the French called an orgasm "the little death."

Not even in her dreams had Hermione ever gone off like she was going off.

Her fingernails dug into the table and she squeezed her eyes shut and screamed her lungs out.

"Oh Gods, Gods Snape, I'm coming! I'm your Lolita, your little whore, your little slut! Fuck me, fuck my hot, dirty cunt while I come all over you, you ugly, magnificent bastard!"

That was just about the filthiest thing she'd ever said.

It was very liberating, and it made her feel very, very good.

And Hermione went limp, limp as a rag doll, and she slid off the table and Snape let her fall against his legs.

He hadn't come yet, and she found herself face to face with the only part of Severus Snape that was absolutely beautiful.

He had it over Viktor, even over Harry, who was famous for being hung like a satyr.

Snape's was a most magnificent weapon, long and thick and heavy and hard.

"_Suck it. Suck the cock that fucked you_."

Viktor always told her that she gave the best head he'd ever had in his life, and he'd probably got a million blowjobs from a zillion Quidditch groupies.

She's sat back on her heels and looked up at him when she was done and found him weeping, and calling on the gods in Bulgarian, Russian, and English.

Dimly, Hermione was thinking that she'd show the jaded old bastard a thing or two, but that was not the foremost thought in Hermione's mind.

It gave her almost as much pleasure to suck him as fucking him had.

She flattened her body against Snape's legs, and put one arm around his hips.

The world had gotten very small, it had shrunk to the size of this man, this one man, the man the Devil had made for her in the deepest pits of sulfurous hell, and his cock in her mouth.

She was hungry for him, starved, and Snape's knees buckled against her and he had to lean back on a chair, as she sucked his big cock, and licked it, and jacked him off into her mouth, bending over him, gloating over him until she had taken the whole monster in.

Snape had both his hand in her hair, and he was moaning the most lovely things, the most lovely filthy things, and his knees locked, and she felt him go all rough and rigid and she knew he was going to come.

His knees weak, Snape sunk back into the chair, and Hermione rested her head on his knees.

She was almost drowsing, but he was hauling her to her feet, reaching for his walking stick.

Pulling her to the stairs.

"Where are we going?"

_"Back to bed. That was just hello. I'll tell you what we're going to do today, Granger. I'm going to fuck you every which way I can, and come in you and on you and all over you, until I haven't got a drop of spunk left in me balls."_

"Not in me arse, Toby. Not only am I not fond of that, as big as your cock is, you'd kill me."

Snape laughed.

It was a hard, ugly sound, and Hermione almost swooned with lust.

"_Is that what you thought I meant? It wasn't. I'm a Master of Sex Magick in the Third Degree. I know ways to fuck that you've never even thought of_."

"I've thought of one, Snape. And I'll bet you give the best head of any wizard on God's Green Earth."

"_I've been told I do. You know the way you come in your dirty little dreams? The way you've never come, in all your life, while you were awake_?"

Hermione nodded, vigorously

With a burst of energy, Snape tossed Hermione over his good shoulder and up the stairs they went.

"_Well, inside of twenty minutes, you'll be coming like that. In my hungry mouth, as I devour you_."

She very nearly swooned.

"Fucking hell, Snape, I can't wait until you get your voice back! I'll bet you can talk me into coming my brains out, just with the sound of your voice." she told him.

**II: Hermione**

"Maybe I should get out of bed, and see about dinner."

Snape wouldn't let her out of bed and she turned to him.

"_We'll down a bit of Strengthening Tonic and go eat at the Belly. I owe you an apology, Granger._"

"You do? For what?"

"_Not being able to sort being fucking furious at you from wanting to do some furious fucking, with you_. _I'm not completely a mercenary old bastard. When I envisioned having you, for the first time, I hadn't expected it to be quite so angry and dirty_."

"Well, I certainly thought that shagging you gave me on the table would be the best of my life. Then you brought me up here. It wasn't angry. Very dirty, though. You don't have to apologize to me, Snape. You've nothing to apologise for."

Snape grinned at her, then, his crooked smile full of gold crowns.

"I don't care how many laws it's against. I'm going to use some old fashioned fucking magic to fix these air conditioners."

"That'd be nice. But they've got air conditioning, at the Belly. Well, if I'm going to make an appearance in public, I'll have to take a bath."

"_Granger, wait. I have something serious I want to talk to you about_."

Hermione's heart leapt into her mouth and her stomach did flip flops.

Panic crawled around in her guts like a virus.

_ Gods, if he tells me he loves me and asks me to marry him, I'll drown meself in the fucking sink._

"_Well, Granger, it's about time, now, I suppose, to make good on that tattoo I so rashly gave you, before the Ragnarok. Mind you, it's no easy go of it, no matter what you may think. We're talking about the most arcane, dangerous and complicated of all disciplines. It is also the oldest of the Five Discplines, the most powerful and the most mystical. I'm talking about the force that drives the human universe. The engine of evolution. Of life, itself. To master the discipline of its magick is to vibrate in tune to the strings that hold the universe together. A magick that is ungovernable and unfathomable; it is a Dark Art not in that it is evil, but in that it is elemental. To choose its path is to choose to become an avatar of entropy, a master of chaos. A piper at not just the gates of dawn, but the gates of doom. And on beyond, into infinite eternity._ _It's serious business Granger. You can still weasel out, you know. It won't be easy, or fun, but as I've not yet begun your instruction, there are ways. And it doesn't mean I'm likely to kick you out of my bed anytime soon, either. _ "

"Why would I want to weasel out?"

"_You wouldn't. It's the best thing for you, really. A witch like you_."

"Are you fucking insulting me, now, Snape? Because I was good enough for you a about a half hour ago, when I was…"

"_I'm not insulting you, for fuck's sake!_ _Considering your adeptness at the other Disciplines, I think you have the makings of a Pendragon. But I think you need the discipline this Discipline will bring you. With some people, sex is their Achilles Heel. You're one of those people. It takes one to know one. I am, too. You were right about me. My type of woman is anyone not my student who is over the age of 16 with a pussy and a pulse. Without the discipline of Sex Magick, I might have ruined meself and more women than you might think of. I've seen the way you throw yourself under Krum, and I'll bet when you were in the woods you threw yourself under Potter and I also just bet you threw yourself under Luke Malfoy, as well, when you had half a chance, even though you were right in the middle of a battle, practically. That's no good, is it? Losing your head when it comes to fucking, I dare say as a woman it'll make more trouble for you than it would for a man. A man who fucks a lot of birds , he's a stud. A hero. Someone to be admired. But, still, a woman who fucks a lot of men is a whore and a slag and a slut, and a reputation like that will come back to bite you on the arse no matter how brilliant you are or what qualifications you have. Not to mention it makes it woefully easy for anyone to get one over on you. They just parade a likely enough bloke past you and you're for it. What I mean to say is, you might as well embrace your nature, and your gifts, and the power , the great power that you can have from them, rather than hide from them in shame, or get yourself into trouble squandering them on whoever you can get your legs around_."

Hermione frowned.

"You know me too well, Snape."

"_Good thing for you its' only me who knows you so well. And Potter, I expect. But he's your best mate, he'll keep schtum, the horny little shit! Fancy the little bastard, leaping all over you the moment my back was turned! Well he's warmed his hands in your muff for the last time, whether he knows it or not! I'll have to make him toe the line, now. I'm fairly close to well. We'll go pay Potter a visit, you and I, without warning him. See just how much of a cock up he's making of his life._"

"I hear things, Snape. None of them are good."

"_I'll fix Potter's little red wagon, don't you worry about that! When I talked to you, just now_, _though_, w_hy did you look so fookin' terrified_?"

"Oh. That. I was afraid you were going to tell me that you wanted to get married, and I was expected to never touch another man, again.

"Who, me?_ I can spell monogamy, but I'm not bloody interested in it. I know you better than that, Granger. That's the last kind of bullshit talk you want to hear. Or I want to be sayin'. Besides, I find it titillating that you're such a nasty little whore. I already know that none of the boys you run with hold a candle to me, at any rate. Utterly corrupt, right down to the marrow of your bones."_

"Your kind of woman?"

_ "Certainly. Right, then. Let's get up out of this bed and go wash up. I'm fookin' starvin'!_"

"Me too. Let's go." Hermione agreed.


End file.
